Enlightened Times Have Always Been

In times of old we stood and looked at the world and the sky above us and we thought the world went on forever, endless, we thought this was it. In those times there were enlightened folk even if their knowledge was limited.

In later times we found the world was round and we thought that our galaxy went on forever, we thought this was it and we stood amazed at our place in it. In these times there were enlightened folk even with limited knowledge.

In more recent times we found that we lived on the edge of a vast galaxy with a billion stars and we found that our galaxy was one of billions floating in a space, still infinite and limitless as we used to believe with the earth and our galaxy, but now at a level beyond the minds abilities. And with this limited knowledge still there were enlightened folk.

Now we push to prove or accept that the seemingly infinite universe is actually one of many, floating in other dimensions, with whole new laws of physics. Knowing for sure now our knowledge is limited and may even never reach a full understanding there are still enlightened folk.

The majesty of the cosmos has always filled us with awe and we have achieved incredible feats in understanding what we do. We will achieve more too. Some have the drive to achieve complete understanding and they'll keep on blowing our understanding minds in their findings. As science pushes the boundaries of the cosmos so too they delve into the mind and the fabric of space, time and matter. This is naturally fascinating as we are all interested in who and what we are.

Useful to the process and existing without the big answers is a feeling of inner comfort and as has been shown, many have gone to their grave with an understanding, while obviously incomplete when it comes to the scientific world view, complete in a most valid way. This was a contentment known as enlightenment.

In all of the improvements in our understanding some people were able to sit comfortably, amazed and impressed as we all are with our place in the cosmos and the whys and the what fors, they did not take solace in religion or by accepting the completeness of the current scientific paradigm, they found wisdom and completeness inside themselves.

Seeing the world as what it is from our own shared perspective, a place of change with good and bad, they were at peace.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Your outer voice

Out loud now: say "hello"
Internally now: think the word "hello"

When you said "hello" the sound came from your mouth and reverberated in your head (naturally, you're quite used to this so excuse me pointing out the obvious).
So then when you thought the word wasn't it natural to assume that the thought happened in your head? This is because to think a word you internally replicate the sensation of saying one.

Did the thought though happen in your head?

Isn't it quite possible that as you are so used to hearing spoken words reverberating in your head that you are then tricked into thinking that thoughts arise there too?

If we step onwards here to the weird and speculative we seem to solve the infinite regression problem of your self conscious centre. When philosophers, neuroscientists and the like delve into this tough realm they are truly at loss as to where the self resides. Are they looking in the wrong spot as they are hearing their thoughts in their head?

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The Big Bang - Where and When

It didn't happen "When" as there was no time.

It didn't happen "Where" as there was no space.

Time and space are dimensions and there are further dimensions beyond the ones we perceive, so "it didn't happen where or when" as there were no dimensions.

So the term "happen" is meaningless.

It was not the "cause" and the afterward the "effect" as, being dimensionless, causality did not exist.

The human mind has evolved to perceive causality but without the use of the mind, causality does not exist.

Following causality back then to an inferred start point is false method and will only, at best, satisfy the mind and not provide a true answer which must in fact be absent of causality as it is absent of dimensions.

Many of us are happy with the idea of the universe being infinite. If not happy with infinite then we must be left wondering what the finite universe is within, and so we must also deduce from there infinity.

To visualise the Big Bang many minds will picture empty space and a zero point exploding. This is what nearly all animations show also but is absolutely false.

The universe as is, by our best current measurements, "expanding and accelerating in its expansion" so all lumps of stuff, galaxies and so on, are becoming more widely spaced. The galaxies are not expanding though. We visualise this by placing coins on a rubber sheet to represent galaxies as we stretch the sheet to show space expanding. Oddly though we have witnessed galaxies in space colliding and we predict our nearest neighbouring galaxy will collide with us. When galaxies collide though it is rarely catastrophic as most stuff is so far apart that very little hits anything else. We result in either one larger galaxy or the two carry on with just a change in shape.

So we see some galaxies collide but the large majority spacing apart. Not just moving apart but accelerating apart. We naturally infer with our minds that what is now big and expanding must have once been small. Yet we say the universe is "infinite" and not "finitely big and getting bigger".

We model the expansion as something growing out into an infinite space but this is not the case. As with the Big Bang which did not happen in space but gave birth to space, so the idea of 'stuff' now expanding into nothingness, is a false view.

What we are shown by cosmological observation is that space is coming into being. What we are shown from quantum theory is that empty space is not empty and it teems with virtual particles coming into and out of existence. A very curious thing which has come about from these two curious things is that: When two virtual particles come into being they then rush to annihilate but if space is accelerating in its expansion they can often be left in existence and so space coming into being then brings about "something from nothing" and it leaves behind particles, stuff and energy.

Perhaps then The Big Bang was not such a "bang" in a "place" (as we have seen, no place or time for that bang could exist previous to it) but instead the first calculated occurrence of expansion, where nothing came to be something.

Our minds work very well with dualism. As we saw earlier they love the dualism of cause and effect. We can then easily see how "nothing" naturally leads to "something". This model then is perhaps acceptable as it fits our predisposed framework, it is also though, measurably, true.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Nothing Coming to Something - Why so much Dark Matter?

Something from Nothing is how we came to be and when we look at the Something we measure it as: a small percentage Matter, A larger percentage "Dark Matter" and an even larger percentage "Dark Energy".

Some wonder why the seemingly important Matter (what 'matters' after all) is so small a constituent in the known universe. We know though that Dark Matter does not react with much. In collapses, Matter heats and reacts and explodes, Dark Matter though doesn't bother.

We can see then that if there were a Big Bang that Matter would react furiously and react and be carried along. Most matter then, and why we find so little in the known universe, is way way way out in space. Beyond current measurable distance. The Dark Matter just hung around.

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I have no calculations to prove this before you accuse me of the same. It's a theory.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

mu can't have it all

One of the supposed fundamental particles in modern physics is a Tau. The Higgs Boson though "permeates the whole universe".

It didn't happen in our universe but must surely have occurred in another one where science chose the name Tao for the Higgs Field. That would have been cute. But then in that universe Lau Tzu may have named the unknowable "tweet" and not Tao.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Higgs Boson Found

With a likelihood of, very very high, we have found the Higgs Boson.

Using the analogy of a grain of sand per interaction;
Enough sand to fill a large sports stadium was used.
Wet your finger and dip it in the sand and that's the useful data.

An excellent analogy emerged as to what the Higgs does. It is responsible for mass, but not your mass. It is responsible for mass on the tiny scale, boson mass. The excellent analogy was that of fame. Place news reporters equally spaced over a room. Were someone with the fame equivalent to the weight of a photon to pass through the room then nearly none of the reporters would notice. Were a person with fame equivalent to a heavy particle to pass through the room then the news reporters would gather around it as it passed through, the more fame the more trouble it would have passing by. Equate this fame in the sub atomic world to a field of some kind.

Now the scientists need to delve further, find more and more information, and try to find exactly what Higgs this is and also to find more parts of the puzzle to complete the ever solidifying "Standard Model" of physics.

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My own theoretical ideas on what we have is something that seems to stretch or warp space. A curve in space would then cause "weight" in the Einsteinium sense where things roll into this warped area.  

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

I need faith!

What I mean is an "I" needs faith.

1) A strong reason for religion is a promise of comfort in and after death.

2) You can not have a fear of death if you have no self awareness.

3) So it stands, bar the laying out of the scientific proof, that self awareness brings forth a fear of death and so a need for religion.

Onwards to my point...

Not a strictly Taoist view but one I have drawn from Taoism is that we, I, me, you, rock, bird, protein, snail, stone, atom, rain drop, star, billion cubic light years of space, cupcake, cow turd, politician even, are expressions of an unbroken whole. Hmm, OK, it is pretty Taoist but for the phrasing.

What I have seen from scientific commentary is that we use the model of our times to describe the picture; The mind was like a TV processing signals, then like a computer crunching programs and data and now they say it is like a network of neurons comparable to the internet. The description will surely alter again with our next technological step.

From my view of oneness though I will not take such a model, I'll instead say that the whole universe is, as one, leading to us all seeming to be, and in this way "I" is not someone right here who'll die. I was not even born. Being unborn and with then no local self, I can't die and so have no calling to religion as a saviour. I'm an expression of an ever shifting and changing universe. The forms are fleeting, temporary and not real in themselves. They are a magical shifting oneness.

Yet somehow this sounds and smells a lot like a dogma to shield me from death. I do though completely doubt my own existence as a separate autonomous entity. I doubt free will, I doubt what makes a human is limited to electrical fizz in a lump of meat. I see in the science I study and the world I see around me a vast interwoven fabric, threads going back so far in time they fade but which carry information vital to life as it is now, threads wrapping sideways through other species, chemical behaviours, properties, essential, unchangeable - Unchangeable that is because were any one apparent thing just a little different, then everything would be different. The way things are is due to everything, ever, and to come.

In this way "I" is not the body, mind, neural network, it is the universe. In this way I was unborn, have constantly shifted form, and can't die. If this is religious dogma then it is certainly a unique way of fooling myself! I don't mind at all as the "I" apparently being fooled is the one I don't believe has a true existence anyway!

When I look at the huge contradiction between science, which says we are an illusion cast up from an interaction of neurons (something I find has great merit but is, as yet, incomplete) and common religion, which says we are an eternal soul which will live on beyond the life of the body (something I ridicule and laugh at) then I find my own stance, while unproven and open to criticism, quite magical.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Consciousness where is I?

Great viewing for anyone exploring consciousness!

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The universe is consciousness- scientific 'proof'

Now. There are no strict and real answers. We must take with caution the words of a smoothly spoken person trying to convince us* of anything, even an educated one. It is with some doubt that the large percentage of scientists would hold up these claims and much of the science is unprovable due to the scales involved. To people without very high mathematical ability these proofs are taken on trust alone, but also feeling.


I have to post as much of what is said in these videos is similar to what I say, though the tone is quite different and I'm never claiming absolute proof, the message is well worth spreading to those with the wish to investigate.
~
*all that he says I already know as a personal truth. I differ only on that he says it is scientifically proven. That I question.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tesla as Magic

This is such a creative way to tell the story of one of my hero scientist/inventors...

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Essentially Identical, Conceptually Distinct (and String Theory)

I've been watching a lot of Ed Written talks, not because I understand (or think I can) but because, in hearing amazing things regarding the universe, my mind commonly feels pleasure and I have my own interesting thoughts. I particularly enjoy M-Theory (also string/bubble..) as it seems to be saying that a vibration, in oneness, can be interpreted as many different things. Imagining a string vibrating in 11 dimensions allows us to consider that this vibration witnessed in our 4 dimensions would appear as different 'things' (be they; quark, photon, electron, goldfish, goose or quack) as only bits of the vibration are witnessed interacting in our space and time then they seem like separate 'bits or things'.

This idea of all things being, in reality 'a oneness waving' seems to me incredibly Taoist and for that matter, Buddhist too, when we consider their phrase "Essentially identical, conceptually distinct".

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

The THAT of non duality

Stop reading when you no longer agree.

Sun beating, rain falling, grass growing.

Sun does not cause the grass, the grass does not invoke the sun.

An interplay, seemingly on automatic.

Science can identify features of the grass where sunlight, rain and earth are combined. The very reasons for the grass, rain, earth or sun are not to be known. Evolution can inform us that grass was the best fit for the role and the apparent design fits the job done so well as all other attempts fell by the way side.

Your heart beats. Your breath is often unguided by you, as you sleep, in much of your wake, the lungs rise and fall. In a way, very unlike the grass, you feel that you are someone, you can pause your respiration and set it off again. Not indefinitely, but there is a feeling of control, not over your heart beat, your mind forming images from light and surface, not over when and which thoughts arise or dissipate, not on how much your fingernails will grow in a second, not over your height age 3, but you feel control over some things. That is what you are, you may think.

Lets say that the top of the spine and the bulk of the brain take care of that which makes for an animal and that there are areas where additional processing may take place, for example the frontal area in the brain, which, by evolution, have set us apart from animals and provided a higher individuality and feeling of self. Is that self then real? Or a set of survival tendencies charged with key roles such as spreading and processing information and ideas within generations rather than, as standard evolution goes, over many generations?

Both answers are complementary and need not actually be chosen between, yet hundreds more exist, hundreds of ways of explaining what we are, why we act the way we do feel the way we do, why we're here, where we're going and whether that is right, wrong or the only possible outcome. As with the grass and the sun, the answer is unknown but in a grander way, the answer is unknowable. The very knowing, one way or another, is only an opinion of the very subject matter at hand, so may well be a complex justification for what is already the case or a pitifully weak explanation.

The answers are not in the mind.

Take an area of space, 3 feet ahead, 3 inches up and a foot to the right. Just over there in front of you. In the air. Zoom in to that space and the invisible gasses move in currents that great mathematicians and powerful computers can't strictly model or predict. Zoom into the atoms that you or science can't truly depict. Zoom into the level where quantum physics say that "It is not stranger than we suppose, but more strange than we can suppose" and along side the supposed particles, that aren't really particles, is a lot of space, full of forces, that you can't explain. The particles that aren't particles are not made of bits and are primarily empty, and so on and so on. We reach a place where there is 'not a something'.

Zoom into any area in the room, deep in a cushion, inside the liquid in your drink, inside your body, and zoom and zoom, you'll find 'not a something'. Go into the depths of space and while we're at it, to save time, go into the depths of star, zoom and zoom, you'll reach 'not a something' in both places and anywhere else you look.

The mind needs things, names for things and explanations of relationships between those things. Yet everywhere you go, as soon as you delve deep enough 'not a something' is there and the mind must draw closure on desire for explanation.

As the space just over there and deep space, and the core of a star, core of an apple, each neuron in your brain, each hair, each flake of skin, cell, anything, anywhere, is ultimately 'not composed' of 'not a something' then there is no you, no star, no space, and .... all is a oneness.

In the mind, in part the automated section and in part the 'free thinking me' section, parts are formed, named, given interactions, given reason, given cause and so the world, made of mind. The world is a construct of the mind and in reality, not a thing exists.

The 'not a something' is THAT and when we say; That is a tree, that is a brick, that is a hair, that is a person, we are saying that 'not a something' is appearing, via the mind, as X.

The power of the meditation Neti Neti (not this, not this) is to see that THAT is all there is, THAT is what you are, not this person, but the same that that is the air over there, the same that that is everything, you are that. In hearing writings that come from the Neti Neti school "You are not happiness, you are not sadness you are not the perceiver you are not the perceived, you are not life you are not death...etc etc" then remember to add: "You are not happiness, because you are that (the one mentioned above), you are not sadness, because you are that, you are not the perceiver, because you are that, you are not the perceived, because you are that, you are not life, because you are that, you are not death, because you are that...etc etc"

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Why you are Christian

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Fulfilling our future need

Here we sit in a future only dreamed of; Computers in our pockets more powerful than ones that used to fill rooms, robots to perform repetitive chores* and a wealth of information updated by the minute. (*although we thought robots in this day would be humanoid in form they just worked out as more functional)

We still dream of the future, sometimes in fear and sometimes in hope. For the sake of our children, hope would be the wiser and more productive. We dream of environmentally sound energy, food production, transport. We dream of faster pocket computers we can talk to, we hope to find life elsewhere in space. (We estimate a billion planets for each of the billion billion galaxies are capable of holding life, good odds)

In our present futuristic life, in the one we see coming, as with that engraved in history, are the same fallible, needy, emotional lumps of lard, just like us, the humans.

No matter how advanced we are technologically, or how far we go, we will still be similar in our wants, needs and feelings. What is not going to happen is that we suddenly find ourselves blissfully enlightened. We will likely, the more technologically dependant we are, be more confused by our place in the universe, more dissatisfied with our life expectancies, achievements, wants and needs.

In the future, as now, as with all of written history, the solace of a simple rendering of a truth, one that can stand through change, stand up against time, stand hand in hand with science, no matter where it leads, will be a universal need. And what we refer to on these pages, unlike religion, unlike politics, unlike any one thing known by us to date or to be made at a future date, is that.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Tao Wow!

There you, here you, are.

This is it. Now it has shifted, changed. It is still it.

Named then it is not it, but one seeming interpretation. Seeking something fitting a fixed name or definition is impossible. This nameless, formless, does nothing but change.

Change is relative to what? Change is not relative to a fixedness, or fixed observer. There is no fixed thing, no observer. Observation is a moving, a shifting, a changing.

We are a swirling dance. Not one thing, vast as the universe, as small as light, is still, fixed or unchanging.

These are fixed answers, fixed truths. And so false. Yet in proclaiming truth while admitting falseness, they are both invalid and, in our case here, most valid.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Aquatic Apes

These are some fascinating in-roads to a captivating theory as to a little of why we are who we are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFRYtPQfyCk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwPoM7lGYHw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liuE4bkNly0

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

God Protects in Battle

Please click the image to view more clearly.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao

Pointing to true peace

What we all see is movement and change. Forms change in relationship to one another and within forms, as science has made clear to those who had not seen, there is only shifting and changing, nothing fixed.

Our attention and comment is nearly always on or about that which is changing, from weather to feelings to movements of resources and (supposed) power. We talk of change all the time, we label and value fleeting forms within this flowing. It is the nature of humans to propose cause/effect and reason to these happenings where there is none. There are no fixed forms and so no concepts on their 'reason' to move or 'act' can be true.

How, in being obsessed by the movement of change all around us, do we then fall into suffering the non-fixedness that is reality? We know all is changing and of no fixed form, [Please revisit science, look out of your window or watch your mind for a minute to reaffirm this] and as ones who see nothing but change we are unique it seems, uniquely self imprisoned by our idea that what we deem good must remain fixed and what we deem bad must be encouraged to move on.

Were a child haunted by a ghost in their mind then you'd aid them to escape this. So too for yourself, remind yourself of how all is changing, forms and doership, cause and effect, are the ghosts in your mind.

We can't deny the ever shifting change. And in that is true peace.

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Tao Wow | Daily Cup of Tao