Exploring the unknown and learning the secrets behind it is the instinct that everyone is born with, and it is also the fundamental reason why human beings are intelligent beings. Pen ~ Fun ~ Pavilion www.biquge.info Throughout human history, almost every explosion of human thought, every profound social change, is from the deep contemplation of the universe and life, from the Chinese Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, to the ancient Greek philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, etc., to the genius artists of the Renaissance, all the way to the modern admired masters of science, all of them.

How did the universe evolve? What will happen in the future? What exactly is life? Where did it come from and where did it go?

With the progress of instruments and technology, modern science in the West has expanded the scope of observation to the vast universe and stars, to microorganisms, molecules, atoms, and even subatomic structures that cannot be seen by the naked eye, and has put forward many theories and hypotheses from the perspective of rational speculation and empirical evidence, but these questions have not yet been convincingly answered.

Oriental culture, represented by Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and traditional Chinese medicine, has been shrouded in a layer of mysticism from the very beginning, whether it is its special practical methods such as meditation, meditation, and meditation, or its whole set of theoretical systems such as animism, karma, and the five elements of yin and yang, all of which are incompatible with Western science, and thus have been criticized in the era of the rise of science.

However, to exist is to be reasonable! In terms of the time of existence, the culture of Eastern mysticism is much longer than that of Western empirical science, and it has undoubtedly undergone many more tests, and it is equally difficult to be convincing if they are all fabricated, false, and superstitious.

Taking traditional Chinese medicine as an example, although its theory cannot be explained by science so far, its effectiveness has been proven by countless facts in thousands of years of life practice. Pharmacist Tu Youyou used the records in ancient books of Chinese medicine to successfully extract the world's only effective malaria treatment drug - the oriental miracle drug: artemisinin, she won the Nobel Prize in medicine at the same time, but also once again proved to the world that Chinese medicine is true and effective.

Of course, it is not enough for people who have been educated in modern science to smoothly accept Oriental culture. How to unveil the mystery of Oriental culture from the source, how to use the knowledge of modern science to interpret its true connotation, and then use it to solve practical problems in life, this is the only correct way to promote Oriental culture.

Looking back at history, on the question of the origin of the universe and the mystery of life, Oriental culture has never stopped exploring, although the process of exploration itself is full of mysticism.

In ancient China, there were three ways for people to explore the mysteries of the universe and life: the first was to find them from ancient books, and it became fashionable to quote scriptures; The second is similar to modern science, which is sought from the practice of life, and the Confucian method of learning from things belongs to this method; The third is the most puzzling, which is obtained through special means such as meditation, meditation, meditation, etc. Eastern mysticism believed that when the mind is in absolute silence, it is able to communicate with the origin of all things and gain superhuman wisdom from it.

In fact, the most important method of exploration of Eastern mysticism is precisely this third method of inward-out. It is said that the great wisdom who first wrote the Buddhist scriptures and Taoist scriptures learned the mysteries of the universe and life through this third method. Legend has it that Shakyamuni meditated on the Bodhi tree for seven days and seven nights before he suddenly realized that he had attained Buddhahood. As for whether this method is really effective, I will not analyze it here, and I will explain it later.

Then, through this mystical method, how does Eastern mysticism explain the origin of all things in the universe? In explaining the origin of all things in the universe, Eastern mysticism came up with the concepts of "Tao" and "Qi" (or Yuanqi). She believes that everything in the universe was originally derived from the "qi" of the chaotic universe, and the innate qi is "qi", which can be interpreted as energy. It means that everything in the universe does not exist in the first place, but it is the energy in the chaotic universe that slowly evolves, and this energy still exists today, and this evolution is still going on today.

In Chinese history, Wang Chong of the Han Dynasty put forward the "Theory of Yuan Qi Naturalism", saying that all things and people are "born of qi and similar to each other"; Zhang Zai of the Song Dynasty proposed that "too void is qi", "too void is formless, the body of qi, its gathering and dispersing, and the object of change"; The Tao Te Ching records: "Tao gives birth to one, life to two, two to three, and three to all things." All things are negative yin and embrace yang, and they are impulsive and peaceful. It means that everything in the universe begins in the void, evolves into the simplest particles because of the Tao, and then derives more complex particles, and finally evolves into all things. The Buddhist sutra "The Sutra of Entering the Ranga" has a similar expression: "Like a huge wave. Si was raised by a fierce wind. The torrent drums the ravine. When there is no disconnection. Tibetan knowledge of the sea is a permanent residence. The realm is moved by the wind. All kinds of waves. Leap and be reborn. In this expression, the sea of Tibetan knowledge (i.e., the sea of void energy) is the essence of the universe, and everything in the material world is nothing but waves on the sea caused by the wind, that is, everything is "created out of nothing". These statements are typical expressions of the origin of the universe in Eastern civilization.

And why can "qi" evolve into all things in the universe? The explanation of the Buddhist scriptures is because of the "wind", the so-called "wind", that is, all kinds of consciousness, all kinds of "delusions", which makes waves in the calm sea of Tibetan consciousness and transforms the void energy into material reality. Taoists explain this reason as "Dao", the so-called "Dao", that is, various rules and relationships, which play the role of organizer and glue, allowing the void energy to constantly "create something out of nothing" and evolve into the smallest particles; It also allows the small particles to continue to combine according to the rules of the "Tao", so as to evolve into the macroscopic world and produce a specific trajectory.

Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching, "There are things mixed, born congenitally", "I don't know its name, the way of strong words", "Tao gives birth to one, one life to two, two to three, and three to all things". Throughout the text, "Dao" can be interpreted in four meanings: (1) The Tao is the origin of all things in the universe. (2) Tao is the driving force behind the operation of all things. (3) The Tao is the law and law of nature. (4) The Tao is the principle that people should follow in their lives. It can also be seen from here that the "Dao" is not a material reality, but a certain relationship, a certain rule, or a certain information, which is the fundamental reason why chaotic energy can be transformed into material reality, and why all things in the universe and human society can operate in an orderly manner.

Compared with the mystery of Eastern culture, Western modern science appears to be rational and realistic, and it follows the principle of outside-in, that is, to discover essence through phenomena, so as to infer the laws of the composition and operation of matter. Through observation and thinking, people are constantly proposing new hypotheses and trying to test them with experimental methods.

With the continuous progress of experimental technology, it is possible for people to study matter in detail, and the internal structure of matter is presented to people one by one, and more and more puzzles can be explained in the corresponding scientific theories. More importantly, Western empirical science is verifiable and reproducible, that is, any new experimental phenomenon and any new scientific theory can be verified and reproduced through double-blind experiments, which also makes empirical science more convincing than Eastern mysticism and gradually occupies an authoritative position.

In the hundreds of years since the development of empirical science, many hypotheses have been put forward about the origin of the universe and the composition of matter. At present, one of the most influential theories on the origin of the universe is the "Big Bang Theory". This theory holds that the universe was formed by a dense, fiery singularity that expanded after a Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. The phenomenon of galactic redshift and the presence of cosmic background radiation support this theory. However, this doctrine also has some fatal flaws, and it fails to explain some of the root questions, such as: What happened before the Big Bang? Where does this mysterious "singularity" come from? What was the first impetus for the Big Bang?

The theory of the composition of matter has also gone through different stages, from the initial "four elements of water, fire, earth and air", to the next "atomic theory", and then to the "quark theory" of modern science, etc., scientists believe that matter is composed of tiny particles, initially composed of molecules and atoms, and then divided into protons, neutrons, electrons, and protons and neutrons are composed of quarks. But isn't it the smallest to be assigned here? Scientists are also not sure, at least the existing experimental conditions are no longer possible to further observe, even quarks, most of them are only theoretical speculation, and the types of quarks that can be detected in experiments are very small, and the existence time is very short.

Just because something is so short and undetectable doesn't mean it doesn't exist! Quarks and electrons are only the limits that can be detected at the current level of technology, but no one knows whether smaller particles similar to "God particles" will appear with the development of experimental technology in the future.

And, even more frighteningly, down to the level of quarks and electrons, their properties as particles of matter have faded and become more pronounced as energy waves. It seems to be further inferred that if there are particles smaller than them, they should be closer to energy waves.

According to this line of thinking, if matter can be divided forever, then the smaller the particles, the closer they must be to pure energy. Therefore, scientists put forward the string theory, and one of the basic ideas of this theory is that the basic unit of nature is not dot-like particles such as electrons, photons, neutrinos, and quarks, but very small wire-like strings of energy, and different vibrations and movements of the energy strings produce various elementary particles.

After scientific research came to this, many scientists suddenly realized that the source of the universe was really not matter, but void energy, just as Eastern mysticism said. The extreme development of Western empirical science suddenly found that the conclusions it explored were the same as the Eastern mysticism that existed thousands of years ago! For this reason, Zhu Qingshi, former president of the University of Science and Technology of China and academician of the Academy of Sciences, lamented in a lecture at Tsinghua University: "When scientists climbed to the top of the mountain with great difficulty, they found that Buddhist scholars were already standing there. ”

Moreover, science is so powerless in the face of the mysteries that continue to emerge from life that people are forced to try to find explanations from the ancient mysticism of the East. Although Oriental mysticism is still mysterious, esoteric and difficult to understand, more and more people, including some scientists, have rekindled their enthusiasm for her inquiry.

So, where exactly did Eastern mysticism come from? Why does it exist? What secrets are hidden in her esoteric content? What useful inspirations can it bring to modern humanity?

While telling the story, this book also explores the truth behind this hidden Eastern mysticism, including its ins and outs, how it works, and its future development direction in the context of big science. A large number of myths, legends and religious stories are cited in this book to improve the plot, not just for the purpose of storytelling, but behind these legends and stories there are many secrets of early human beings, which are closely related to the culture of Eastern mysticism, and digging out the hidden information in these stories is more conducive to understanding the causes and connotations of the culture of Eastern mysticism.

Finally, I remember Albert Einstein once said, "Many people's field of vision is a circle with a radius of zero, and they say it's their field of vision." The meaning of this sentence is very similar to the ancient Chinese fable - "the frog at the bottom of the well".

For humans, what is out of sight is not because it does not exist, but because it is invisible. If you want to confirm its existence, you must not be limited to the perception of the five senses, limited to the poor life experience of the individual, but should be open-minded, uninhibited, and perceived. If you do that, then you won't be too far from being otherworldly.

Finally, thank you for your patience in reading this text, and I wish you all the best in the rest of your reading.