The Taoist double worldview and the golden bell shield

By Prof. Si-Chen Lee

1. The Taoist double view of the universe

Hu Fu-Chen is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in mainland China, known for his work on Taoist studies — Taoist philosophy, Taoist religion and the study of immortals alike. In October 2002 he came to Taiwan at the invitation of Prof. Li, the former head of the Chinese Literature Department at National Taiwan University. I had the good fortune to hold a small symposium with Hu and with Prof. Li of Academia Sinica, one of Taiwan's own specialists in Taoist studies, so that Hu could see what work was being done here — including, of course, what I had found in my scientific experiments.

Hu's path has been an unusual one. He read chemistry at Nankai University, and after graduating, as circumstances led him, he studied philosophy, worked in medicine and public health, and then turned to more than twenty years of research into the Taoist tradition. His grounding in both science and philosophy has served him well in understanding it. He gave me a copy of his recent book, A General Treatise on Taoist Studies: Taoist Philosophy, Taoist Religion, the Study of Immortals, an epic work that pulls together the history, central ideas, practices, immortal lore and canonical texts of Taoism into a single survey. He also gave me ten pages of handouts from the talks he gave in Taiwan, and I quickly noticed that one of them concerned the Taoist double view of the universe. It thrilled me.

Hu made a point of saying he was going to reveal Taoism's greatest secret: the double cosmology. The universe is made up of two worlds, the world of substance and the world of the void; they are also called the acquired world and the innate world. Fu Xi's innate trigrams and King Wen of Zhou's acquired trigrams are examples. In the terms of current scientific knowledge, the world of substance, the acquired world, is the four-dimensional space-time of matter, while the world of the void, the innate world, is the information field we have found — in other words, the spirit world.

So Taoism had known all along that a spirit world exists, side by side with the material universe. How does one break through the barrier between the two? In Taoist terms it takes cultivation of oneself, opening the mysterious aperture, so that consciousness — or even the body — can pass freely between the two worlds. The highest attainment Taoist adepts cultivate toward across a lifetime is to ascend bodily in broad daylight, enter the world of the void, and live without dying.

2. A Taoist of our own day

As chance would have it, I came to know a present-day Taoist, Mr. W. He is now in his forties; he left mainland China to study in the United States, and after taking a master's degree in biochemistry he has lived between Silicon Valley, the mainland and Taiwan, serving others through Taoist practice. Mr. W is not old, but his attainment runs deep and his art is finely honed. There are things he will do and things he will not, things he will speak of and things he will not; he is modest in conversation and clear about his principles. He holds a complete system of the universe, and can come at different questions from different angles, arguing and explaining with real clarity.

He once brought some talismans for children to try in finger-reading experiments. The children with the ability could not see the talismans at all; what they saw instead were visions — bright light for some, for others a spinning black sphere or arrows pointing in every direction. That showed us that talismans are addresses too, able to connect to certain specially established information websites and produce what the tradition describes as roaming through space and time, averting misfortune, dispelling calamity and driving off sickness.

Mr. W agrees with Hu. The aim of his lifetime of cultivation is to ascend bodily in broad daylight and enter the world of the void, though he may not manage it in this life. After turning forty he was to begin taking on the next generation of disciples, carrying on the lineage handed down by his own master. For a thousand years and more, the Taoists of China have kept their lineage this way, generation to generation, unbroken to this day. My complex space-time theory owes a great deal to him — in particular, on the question of where the passage lies between the yin and yang worlds of complex space-time, he pointed out that the fish eyes of the traditional Chinese taiji sphere are that passage, and with that the unified theory of complex space-time fell into place for me.

3. Setting the golden bell shield

When we run finger-reading experiments, we often disturb the information field, to the point where spirits come and interfere. When Miss T was undergoing magnetoencephalography at Taipei Veterans General Hospital, for instance, spirits of no great standing interfered in every session. Miss T could see it all plainly in her third eye: sometimes a black shape would rush at her, sometimes a furred claw would try to crush her screen, sometimes the message she was sending would be intercepted and bounced back. It varied endlessly.

I asked Mr. W whether it was possible to set a golden bell shield over the subject during an experiment, to keep outside spirits from interfering. He said it was, so we tried it once: while Miss T underwent magnetoencephalography, Mr. W stood by to hold the protection. He kept his eyes closed throughout, wholly focused, murmuring under his breath — and the result was excellent. Not once, with her third eye open, was she interfered with by an outside spirit. His golden bell shield had evidently done its work. The arts of Taoism run as deep as the sea, and its learning has continued unbroken for a thousand years.