10,000 Years of Strangeness: A Paranormal Primer for Ancient and Modern China
Part II: True Tales from the Locals
Chapter 8-5: WeChat about Ghosts: The Secret of the Golden Flower—微信鬼--太乙金華宗旨
Chapter 8-5: WeChat about Ghosts: The Secret of the Golden Flower—微信鬼--太乙金華宗旨
Previous Chapters 前章: Part 1: Chapter 1, Ch 2, Ch 3, Ch 4, Ch 5-1, Ch 5-2, Ch 5-3, Ch. 6
Previous Chapters 前章: Part 2: Chapter 7, Chapter 8-1, Chapter 8-2, Chapter 8-3, Chapter 8-4
Dreams can seem really real sometimes. They can seem so real you don’t even know you’re dreaming until you wake up. I’ve had dreams like that.
While I was in college I lived at my mom’s house. It’s almost 100 years old and isn’t built at all on the grand plan of today’s McMansions. It was quite cozy, but all you really needed to raise a family in.
My room was on the ground floor just off the living room. It seems like an odd place for a bedroom, which is why my mom uses it for a sitting room/office today. This room directly adjoined the ground floor bathroom through a door. Through another door across the bathroom was another bedroom that was reserved for guests. It in turn opened into the dining room, so that the ground floor was almost a square with the living room, dining room and kitchen along one half of the square and the bedrooms and bathroom along the other half.
Now at that time I was learning astral projection, a technique by which you can consciously leave your body and move about the dimensions where such things take place. It's a perfectly natural process that happens every time you fall asleep. The trick with astral projection is to make it a conscious act and workable skill.
I don’t pretend to have a scientific handle on all of it, but it is real and occurs outside, or shall we say, intermingled with, the 3rd dimension in which we live our everyday lives. The practice is simple enough in principle: you let your physical body fall asleep while your consciousness stays awake. At the right moment, you stand up or float. If you turn around, you should be able to see yourself asleep in bed, and then you can freely explore the boundless wonders of the Universe, physical and non-physical alike.
The practice is also known in China and was discussed in some detail in The Secret of the Golden Flower (太乙金華宗旨), a text attributed to Lu Dongbin (吕洞宾) during the Tang Dynasty. Lu Dongbin is another Taoist master who is considered to be one of the Eight Immortals (八仙), but as we learned in Chapter 5-3 from Tian Liyang, immortality is bullshit. Only extreme longevity is possible. Lu Dongbin would be over 800 years old today, a regular Methuselah.
One night while I was engaged in this practice I felt a sudden terror. I looked toward the open bathroom and saw a demon rushing towards me. At least it seemed like some kind of a demon. It reeked horribly, like the foulest, most disgusting smell you can imagine, and had a face that looked like rotting flesh.
I flew towards it and threw a rag over its putrid face. Just then, my cat, Shmoo, ferociously leapt on its head and tenaciously dug in her claws. Suddenly all was quiet. I got sucked back into my body and sprang awake. The smell of rotten flesh still hung in the air. Shmoo sat in the bathroom doorway and meowed at me.
Because of this experience, I find the next story to be quite plausible.
A young man was taking a nap at home one afternoon. As he lay there, he heard someone calling him. It woke him up, and when he opened his eyes he was flying around his room. When he looked down he saw himself in bed.
Then he heard someone singing old Chinese folk songs. He turned his head and saw three people flying along next to him, two women and a boy. They all looked normal but had completely emotionless faces. All had long hair and stank to high heaven.
They started trying to pull him out of the room all the while singing ancient Chinese songs. He didn’t want to go with them, so he started to try and fight them off. They kept singing the same old song and pulling him closer and closer to the door.
He saw his dog and called to it. Somehow his dog heard him, looked up and saw the ruckus. The dog started barking wildly. He jumped up on the bed and bit his owner’s leg. The painful bite jolted the boy awake, but it was like falling rapidly and suddenly into himself. He swung his legs around to sit on the edge of his bed. His dog was sitting next to him in the bed. After that his whole body hurt for a few days as if he had received some injuries somehow from that experience.
