Observations placeholder
Ernest Eitel - Feng Shui
Identifier
013800
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The spiritual world seen in dreams and visions is perceived by many cultures, as the 'ideal world'. Although most dreams and visions are symbolic and are there to teach us lessons, there is a belief amongst many cultures that what they see in their dreams must be what heaven 'is' in a concrete sense – thus a sort of ideal landscape – something to aspire to.
And this perception has been taken to its most advanced stage in execution, with the Chinese system of Feng Shui. The system is most closely related - after all the upheavals of the Revolution - with Qigong, although it has also impacted Shinto as well.
A description of the experience
Feng Shui – Ernest Eitel
Natural science has never been cultivated in China in that technical, dry and matter of fact fashion, which seems inseparable from true science. …..they evolved a whole system of natural science from their own inner consciousness … it preserved in Chinese natural science a spirit of sacred reverence for the divine powers of nature.................
Everything that exists on earth is but the transient form of appearance of some celestial agency. Everything terrestrial has its prototype, its primordial cause, its ruling agency in heaven. The Chinese philosopher, looking at the beauties of nature, the variety of hills and plains, rivers and oceans, the wonderful harmony of colour, light and shade, sees in it but the dim reflex of that more splendid scenery frescoed in ethereal beauty in heaven...
..................If we consider the second division of the system of Feng-shui, called Su, or the numerical proportions of nature. Observing the heavens, the constant change of day and night, the numbers and distribution of the heavenly bodies, moving on, hosts of them, each in swift course, and yet never interfering with one another – I say observing this varied and yet harmonious whole, it struck the Chinese observer, that there are, at the basis of this grand scheme of heaven, mathematical principles; that all the heavenly bodies move and exist in certain numerical proportions. Again, observing our earth, with its constant revolutions of summer and winter, spring and autumn, growth and decay, life and death, the Chines noticed that here again the same mathematical order is repeated, that earth is but the reflex of heaven, the coarse material embodiment of the ideal mathematical problems.
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Heaven, it is said, requires the aid of man to carry out its scheme of justice. Earth requires the aid of man to bring its products to absolute perfection. Neither heaven nor earth are complete in themselves, but leave the last finish of everything to man. Consequently, as regards the natural outlines of the earth's surface, there is much room left for the active interference of man.
The influence of the natural configuration of the ground is very powerful in its influence upon the destiny of men, but man may alter the natural configurations, and improve aspects of any unfavourable locality. If there is any elevation not high enough, he can make it higher; if any natural watershed is running in a straight line dangerous to life and property, he can either remove it or turn it into a favourable direction.... if there is a mountain disturbing the harmony of the surroundings because it bears the outlines of Jupiter, why he has merely to round off the outlines of the peak and Jupiter is changed to Venus.
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When the Hong Kong government cut a road, now known as the Gap, to the Happy Valley, the Chinese community was thrown into a state of abject terror and fright, in account of the disturbance which this amputation of the dragon's limbs would cause to the Feng-Shui of Hong Kong; and when many of the engineers, employed at the cutting, died of Hong Kong fever, and the foreign houses already built in Happy Valley had to be deserted on account of malaria, the Chinese triumphantly declared it was an act of retributory justice on the part of the Feng Shui