Any taoist here?

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Very beautifully put post!
I think that last bit should be a bit redefined, though. I think the Tao is The Concept, and I think the universe is continuous, which means the individuality has to be abandoned before total realization is at hand. Perhaps that's what you intended, but by referring to the hemispheres of the brain you got me hooked on thinking "microcosmic reflection" filtered through the organism (even if not processed by the left hemisphere).
In royal, or raya yoga, the last step, samadhi, means the individual gives itself up and goes into the Godhead, which is the perspective of the universe where all chips fall into place. Personally, I have yet to achieve a decent yama/niyama. It would be fun to compare and talk about experiences in yoga according to the eightfold path if you guys feel like it!

Yes that would be great. I have focused on Taoist concepts and know little of the eight fold path. It would be great to learn what you know. All true knowledge comes from the same source.

What I was trying to explain earlier was that according to my experience at this time, the tao cannot be comprehended, "seen", "grasped by any means associated with the human bio/phsycoloical mechanisms. It is made know when all our "doing" ceases. In non-action, it naturally appears. I guess I go with the canned "right brain" explanation because it seems people relate that with the closest concept of where/when we need to be to allow the activation of the Tao....

At any rate, language naturally fails when trying to describe that wich cannot be described. The Tao that can be named, is not the eternal Tao... Thought to words are difficult in this area for me.

I heard a great definition of tao. It came I belive from Indian religion and filosophy.

It stated that the entity we know as 'God' is not the only creator. And what he has done, create life, earth, universe and everything (everything to us) is nothing. There exists something else, another entity you might say, that is above 'God', in fact that has created what we call 'God'. It does not has a name, cannot be seen nor understood.
So this 'entity' has created the god that has created us. Ain't that cool?

When I think of God I imagine a face or a being of light, but this other ' thing' I can not even begin to imagine. Or put a name to. That for me is the concept of Tao.

The force or entity, for lack of more appropriate words is exactly what the Lao Tzu refers to when he says the Tao is the forefather of the gods. For humans a "god" is a mental emotional construction invented to do what they think they cannot. Al the God's of established western thought are beings that are objects of worship and usually thought of as seperate or exterior to the individual.

The Tao, however, is the primal energy that continuously creates and renews all things it is within, without we are the Tao, the same primal energy. It is our most basic nature.

Oh, well, I'll do my best with what little knowledge I possess in the field then.
It was postulated by Siddharta, of course, being the inventor of meditation afaik. He used different words than the ones I like to use to describe the concepts, but inherently his choice of words were sublime, only in a specific culture it's better to adapt culturalized terms imo. The path to enlightenment by yoga is a way to put a spell on the entire organism/entity/soul to make all parts of it go in the same direction.
The lowest form of existence connected to the human psyche are the instincts, connected to nerve impulses, controlled by almost (if not entirely) autonomous reactions, so we can't reason with them; we have to get them used to how we want them to react. Therefore, the first step in the eight fold path is the asana, which sort of means "position". What this does is teach the mind to sit still and shut up in a strictly physical way. You find any seated position and you sit completely still. When you can do that for about an hour with a filled to the brim cup of water on your head without spilling a drop you've mastered it. At first, the body will be reluctant and in much pain, but when you begin to master it, you grow into finding the position (and you must stick to the same position every time!) natural. Aleister Crowley describes it as when an old man gets into a warm bath.
Then we move on to the mind and its most crude, physical areas. The next step is called mantrayoga and pranayama. The point of this exercise is to get the mind to stop playing around in the circus wheel of constant, ego-related thoughts. The thoughts are dissipated by repeating a mantra, anything you like, "the world and I are one, the world and I are one, the..." as you breathe in you say it once, as you breathe out once and repeat until your other thoughts are gone and the mantra fills your entire mind. Christian mystics have something they call mantra of the heart, or heart mantra (I forget the exact term). This is a mantra repeated so often (every waking minute!) that in the end it becomes part of breathing. Inhale: "Christ is my deliverer, exhale: "Christ is my deliverer" etc. Seems like a good idea imo.
Then, when the mind can clear itself of unwanted dirt easily enough, we go on to yama/niyama, which means to control the emotionality of the mind. The point is to not get excited about anything, but remain indifferent even to thoughts of hate and fear. The usual approach in good schools teaching the eight fold path is if you can do it for an hour or two without flinching, you've passed.
Then there is the pratyahara, which is a bit trickier (at least for me, who have ADHD). It's about not thinking on anything at all. That includes not thinking about not thinking about anything at all (and not thinking about not thinking about not thinking too!).
At this point we have an empty mind and can begin to focus on where we want to take it to exceed our insights and individuality (rather than simply personality), and so the next step, dharana, is about focusing on a single thought long enough to get the mind to "zone out". This stage is almost magickal from our ordinary western pov and psychology has not covered it and the stages beyond afaik. The wisdom achieved at this point is usually unity with all, subject becomes object, because in the stillness of the mind where nothing changes, nothing really is, and thusly nothing can be observed as something other than the mind itself. Then the next to last folding is dhyana. I'm not sure this can be easily understood, because it is beyond simply "grasping that nothing is truth". Aleister Crowley writes: "Also the conditions of thought, time, and space are abolished. It is impossible to explain what this really means; only experience can furnish you with apprehension. (This, too, has its analogies in ordinary life; the conceptions of higher mathematics cannot be grasped by the beginner, cannot be explained to the layman.)" And elsewhere: "The most important factor in dhyãna is, however, the annihilation of the Ego." Yet, it's not the last step! The last step is called samadhi and this is BIG! It's not only giving up your ego, completely dissipate into the all singing, all dancing crap of the world, but unite and be the Godhead itself; called cosmic awareness, what Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and a few others probably have achieved (what probably is the meaning of Lao Tzu's apparent "disappearance" - he became one with the world and by definition could not exist as an individual).
Well, that about sums it up as far as my knowledge goes so far. Hope to be criticised and added to and that people with experiences above my own care to share.
It may not sound much, but things start to happen pretty early in the development of the yoga path. The first times the thoughts completely disappear and there is silence in the mind itself is pretty damn cool imo. For me, it was as thinking through a wall, going into something not room-related, and watching from the crib, unable to move and touch; and the thoughts that moved around me were not mine, but just as external as every sound or other impression from the rest of the world. It can take time in that stage to develop a sense of who one is in relation to it all. One of the biggest warnings Crowley (pretty much my only teacher, even if I've read a few books here and there about kundalini and so on; Crowley is without doubt The s**t) gives is to congratulate yourself for all you have achieved. Nothing is so dramatically detrimental to the progress.
And for anyone who may have become interested reading this, it's FUN! once you get down to it, and you feel GREAT! afterwards. If I go a week without meditating I can be really irritated, then I sit down and 30-60 minutes later I'm dancing through everything without a trouble in the world; it's like free psychedelics: takes away all pain and give lots of insight and bliss. But in the beginning it's tough to find motivation, stamina and endurance and patience. Those blockades usually fall away when the results start coming in. It's still work at that point, but it's easy to see what it's worth.



Sorry, I was too closed minded when reading it to see that. The Qabalists call it Chokhmah, wisdom in Hebrew. The next step above it to unite is Kether, crown. They are both sephiroth (Hebrew for numbers) applied on the human body, much like the chakras, but not exactly the same position or meaning. The fundamentally psychological meaning of chokhmah is exactly what it's called, but systematizing it on the Tree of Life as the Qabalists do, brings out the fundamental meaning of what wisdom is. It simply means reflection of truth, and on the Tree, Chokhmah is the result of the crown, the innermost identity of Godhood, the Logos and so on, seeing itself for what it really is. But! It's still just a reflection; it's not there yet, and this is most probably what you talk about when you cite Lao Tzu saying that the Tao is the forefather of the gods we can comprehend.



So true.

Excellent information, I appreciate your work. It will take me a while to digest this. You seem to be knowledgable on these aspects. Are you formally trained?

Thank you! Just hope it's useful.
No, not formally trained, but I have totally snowed in on this entire field called magick for about a year or so now, and yoga is part of it. White magick = yoga. Yoga is the practice of getting in touch with the rest of the universe through introspection (in fact, yoga means "union"), and that's exactly what white magick is as well. For me, this field outdoes about a third of my daily practice, but don't take that to mean much in the sense of getting any good at it. I think I suck because I can hardly keep from following thought trains after close to a year of rigorous practice. =)

Some people who want to try it out try to skip stages, but that's a very bad idea. Yes, the mind is what needs to be realigned foremost, but unless an intense study of the physical body lies in the storage when delving the depths of True Insight, then the castle is built on sand.
This was the mistake I made; thinking I had some talent with controlling my mind and when I tried to do asana my mind's progression seized to exceed and so I went on to mantrayoga instead. But when I got to the point of pratyahara there were so many things I hadn't accounted for and still my eyes position were a problem that made it hard for me to relax. The whole purpose of yoga is to extinghuish the Self completely and thusly on every level. If you look closely on the steps you probably notice the genius in their development.

And one other important thing I didn't mention in the above post is that mantrayoga/pranayama is about breath control. You inhale for as long as you exhale when using the same mantra both for in and out. Why is this important? Because balance is key to ignorance and what we want in yoga is the ability to ignore the world of maya (the false construction made by the material/active ego). Pranayama gives a rythm, and when the mind is exposed to a rythm rather than irregularity, it begins to slumber off into forgetfulness; it has already seen it, been there, done that, so there's nothing left to explore, it's all the same - this is the point of the mantra practice. And it's also the main principle of yoga as a whole, because this is what happens on all levels of the individuality. Look at it this way:
Take an opinion x and weigh it against an opinion y. Let the two opinions be argued, first in defence of x then of y, then x again, y again, x, y, x, y, faster and faster until the entire mess of fluctuations between the two extinguishes them both in one blast of unity, because they finally meet in the middle when they are completely explained and one can see that if they are comparable enough to argue (if they interact at all), then they have the same core.
It doesn't matter what arguments, because the universe looks like this: as above, so below, or: any one part of the universe contains the entire universe the same way a single atom contains the ability to be part of any construct possible to make. The affinity for anything to be anything is inherent in all the universe, so in the end, nothing specific exists.
And by the way, everything we see is a lie. White would not exist without the compliment of black to able us to distinguish it by, as any student of the Yin/Yang map of the universe will tell us. That means that in the end, nothing is what it is in any other way than as the contrast to what it isn't, get it? All things are contaminated by what they are not, so there is no way to ever give a truthful answer to anything. Heisenberg's uncetrainty principle is the preferrable way for mathematicians to grasp this idea, because it is the exact same thing.

Well, that could hopefully function as a start to anyone willing to go for yoga. But I would much rather recommend books by experts on the subject, of course. Aleister Crowley's "Eight Lectures on Yoga" is without doubt the best book I ever read on it.

I've found that I believe in many of the more basic tenetes of Taoism (just go with nature, simplicity is best), and have found that applying it in my daily life has made it much more easy for me to deal with the constant stream o bulls**t I have to deal with (I WORK AT MC.DONALD'S, I know what true B.S. is ).


I have learned about Taoism from a much...less conventional source than what most others have used (such as the Tao De Chiang); and what is the best introductory book for Taoism- The Tao of Pooh. The stories of Winnie the Pooh described through Taoism and vice/versa; and how to apply it, somewhat, to your daily life.

Excellent information, many similarities with Taosim in that hamony and balance are the ultimate virtures. Also, in self development one must attain harmony in the body before proceeding to the mind and then the spirit. These are the Three Shperes or Treasures.

However we learn of the universal principals matters not. Our approach to them once learned does.

Btw, I have often read that a "teacher" is needed to guide one through self development. I have not met any teachers in physical form. Should I look for one? Is self-development possible on ones own? If the student is ready, will the teacher appear as they say?

Full moon tomorrow, yin is born...

Ooh! I read Tao of Pooh once. I really liked his interpretations, and also Milne's idea was brilliant! I had an idea to try to teach children about relative philosophyin school (or even kindergarten) to make them more open to suggestions and live-and-let-live-ish at the earliest stages possible so it will have rooted itself when they grow up, but I had no idea how to do it so kids could understand, so when I found the Tao out about Pooh I was very glad.
But then again, Lao Tzu's book is so incredibly complete that no thinker has yet been able to make enhancements of it afaik. No book has ever been able to explain such foundational issues in such easy ways. I think it's more beautiful than math in that respect.



Yes, indeed. I have only followed the curriculum of O.T.O., so I don't know about other magick schools, but I could bet that many of them use Tao Te Ching as among the first things to read to get into the right frame of thought. You notice that thing he calls being in the centre of the circle? To neither be Yin nor Yang, but balance both in all things, be observant and adaptive and not proudly take anything for granted; that's in essence the entire process of meditation.

About the master question, if it was directed at me, I was kinda hoping you would begin meditating and surpass me so you could be mine and I won't have to work so hard.
But seriously, I took that to mean a more allegorical thing when I first stumbled upon it, so that it could mean that you are ready and you therefore follow the correct course in life. That course can either lead you to a person who can teach you (if you act a certain way, you may get noticed by such people, or you are interested in certain things and chances are higher you'll encounter people beyond you on your path if you hang around book stores with the right material or buddhist lodges and so on...) or to the fact that you look for any sign in nature, individual or not, following the right currents and people around you become your teacher because you by then learn from them what they have always taught you, only you haven't been able to listen until you are ready; like a curtain falling down to display the truth.
But it would be cool if a guy with long, grey beard suddenly popped up in a cloud of smoke, of course!

As usual, I took the teacher thing literally. As you have said I often experience through nature or people the "aha!" thing and suddenly "see" something differently and thus "learn" (love quotation "marks").

I also see a mind picture of a circle of people sitting on the floor around a ba gua diagram. Each personality is responsible or specializes in a different aspect of development and will speak on the issue I am questioning.

I had one teacher named Heyman for a while. Anytime there was something to notice or learn I would hear this head voice go Hey man! This of course would roust me from my hypnotic autothought and open my eyes.