/lit/ - Literature

>>20472238
>>20472238
And these strange analogies become even more fascinating, when you bring up alchemy — Chinese Taoist spiritual alchemy and its immortalization of the body, sometimes also held as creating a soul or immortal body, with the alchemical teachings of Arabic Islamic history as well as of Western occultism, where the “alchemy” appeared to be an obfuscation of and metaphor for spiritual teachings and practices that would be deemed heretical.

Is it possible that certain concepts and practices which are simply more exoteric and culturally, traditionally acceptable in the East, have simply found their mirror in the West throughout the history of secret societies and esotericism, having to teach and practice privately and secretly, what in the East can be said and taught relatively more openly — “You have the capacity for enlightenment, a higher potential for consciousness, within yourself, which doesn’t necessarily come to full fruition without authentic knowledge and training from a school, guides, or gurus who can guide you in it”?

For Western religious conditioning, ideas like these seem like the ultimate Promethean/Luciferian heresy, as well as like personality-worship (of the guru) and cultism — and hence, it appears what sages have been able to teach and say more openly in the East, has had to be done esoterically and privately in the West.

The funny part, furthermore, is that even if one has some intellectual curiosity about, interest in, or vague understanding of all these complex issues and ideas — it doesn’t mean one has actually gotten anywhere! Maybe some random Tibetan lama is experiencing and knowing far more than you ever will simply from the books you have access to in the libraries and bookstores.

Hence why ultimately, I think the crucial turn-around is that “this” — whatever you feel attracted to when reading about various religious traditions — is more like SOME ENERGY SOURCE THAT CAN BE CONSTRUCTIVELY TAPPED INTO (kooky and New Age as that sounds), as opposed to a matter of belief and disbelief. The Hindu yogis might say the kundalini shakti needs to awaken within you, and Taoist Chinese sages that you need to cultivate your body and spirit with allegorically alchemical processes like qigong (coordinated bodily movements/postures, breathing, and meditation exercises), which literally means something like “life-energy (qi) cultivation (dong)” in Chinese.

And furthermore, this mostly still only ties into what perhaps occultists would call the “etheric” or “psychic” aspects of these teachings, having to do with psychic energy, subtle bodies, and the like — which, perhaps, ARE actually some hidden heritage of and potential development of humankind we don’t fully scientifically understand or admit exists, but, ultimately, don’t even have a single thing to do with the primordial Buddha-nature.