Hello.
Today we continue to discuss the main Taoist ideas.
During our last session we spoke about the philosophical ideas and
philosophical basis of Taoism.
Today we move forward to the more religious idea or
religious practice of Taoism.
And today first of all we'll discuss the idea of the immortality.
The idea of long life and immortality which became a central part,
a focal point of all medieval Taoism.
Different schools of Taoism had a different approach to the idea,
how to reach this immortality.
Some schools regard immortality as a real immortality of the physical body,
it means a long life without death, [FOREIGN], a long life without death.
And other schools regarded immortality more as a spiritual immortality,
and it means that one day human body will come to decline.
But our spiritual soul or souls,
the multiplicity of souls will become untouchable.
So it means in this case, will begin the immortals.
So the main hero in the medieval Taoism is called the immortal,
which is called the xian.
Sometimes it's called the true people or true human, jian jian.
Because all other humans are just fake humans.
Because one day the bodies will die.
It means that they're fake.
They're not eternal.
But the rest of them kind of people which are eternal,
are immortals, that's why they are true people, [FOREIGN].
They understand the nature of the things, the order of this nature,
that's why they could live without any death.
In the ancient and medieval pictures, we can see these images of immortal.
Sometimes, they are very strange.
They are surrounded by different kind of symbols of the immortality.
For example, toad, like in this picture.
Or in the picture on the right side, the old
man surrounded by the pictures of the mushrooms,
which one of the ingredients for the peeler of the immortality and
of the which are also the symbol of the immortalities.
Immortals, it's not just a symbolical name for
these kind of people.
These people practice a different kind of exercises.
First of all meditation exercises, breathing exercises and
finally they made a special kind of elixir.
All the pillar of immortality inside or outside the body.
So it means that all this immortals could be divided into three main categories,
the first one is called the human immortals.
Which already reached immortality but stay in their own bodies.
That's the first step of immortality.
The second or the highest step is called the Earth immortality.
So in this case, according to the major ideas,
this kind of Earth immortals could live in their bodies or
they could go out from their bodies and just wandering all around.
And finally, the highest point in so-called heaven immortals, like this one.
Heaven immortals, it's already the spirits
of these people who leave their bodies, and
they are completely independent from the mundane life.
So these three kinds of immortals were recognized
almost by all schools of Taoism, but once again different school of Taoism
had various views how to reach this immortality.
There are some kind of symbols of immortality almost in all Taoist pictures.
And for people who know how to read these symbols,
they could understand the idea of such kind of pictures.
In this picture we can see an old man,
which is already immortal, speaking with a turtle.
Turtle's one of the symbols of the immortality, so it means
the turtle is kind of bridge between the spiritual world and this world.
Turtle brings some kind of ideas and some kind of science
on its back and in this case, especially in this picture,
two immortal creatures speaks with each other.
This idea of the dialogue between immortal.