The Legend of Tokyo Taoist

Chapter 134: Training trip (7)

In the cool mountain breeze at night, Qian Xiaoyi asked, "You don't need to know much about the detailed history of my school. After all, you are not from my school. This time we will mainly talk about more recent events. As a Japanese, you should have some understanding of the concept of superpowers, right?"

Inuyama Heita was stunned. How were the ancient Chinese Taoist priests connected with superpowers? Could it be that this world was not just about psychics as I imagined, with other supernatural phenomena as well?
He nodded: "I guess so. Everyone here knows about it." After all, there was once a craze for researching super powers in Japan, and even now there are still a large number of people who believe in the existence of super powers and can bend spoons with telekinesis.

"It's not just Japan." Qian Xiaoyi began to talk: "In the last century, all countries were researching this kind of thing, and we are no exception..."

In the last twenty years of the last century, the world situation changed dramatically. With the advent of the information age, people began to desire to understand the world, and all kinds of true and false rumors continued to spread at that time. It was also during this period that almost all countries began to study supernatural phenomena, from UFOs to super powers, Himalayan snowmen to Mayan crystal skulls... All kinds of strange and weird things in street literature were actually spread during this period. People had an extremely strong interest in those supernatural things, and a supernatural craze swept across the world.

The same is true in China. Riding on the wave of economic opening up, all kinds of foreign ideas, good and bad, continued to pour in and impacted people's thinking. As a result, things like qigong and super powers became popular. After all, those were things that developed countries abroad were researching. On the streets, you could often see practitioners with pot lids on their heads to receive cosmic energy. These things were later proven to be scams, but in those days they were a world trend and had many believers.

Since there is qigong, do ghosts also exist? What about the various ancient cultivation methods? What are their scientific principles?
In order to catch up with this wave and not fall behind the times, various strange people, either inherited from their families or from their own sects, also joined in. Just like superstitions in that era were often disguised as science, even catching ghosts had to be studied using scientific methods. Qian Xiaoyi and his master, Taoist Lingkong, were one of the people who responded to the country's call and joined this type of research.

But unlike those ridiculous scams that seem similar now, this combination really helped these people to study something and came to a very unorthodox conclusion.

——There are no monsters or ghosts, no spiritual powers. Everything is just a fantasy based on human cognition. Under this common illusion, supernatural phenomena are nothing more than collective cognition generated at a certain time, in a certain place, and among a group of people. Depending on the angle of observation, different results will occur in the real world.

People who believe in this theory are called "cognitiveists".

"Cognitive faction..." Inuyama Heita was somewhat shocked. He had not expected that what Qian Xiaoyi had said during the employee training would have such a big background. After a brief shock, Inuyama Heita asked, "Since there is a cognitive faction, it means there must be other factions, right?"

"That's right." Qian Xiaoyi said, "The opposite of the cognitive school is the traditional people who believe that gods, spiritual power, magic power, ghosts and other things really exist. We call them the 'classical school'. From the moment the cognitive theory appeared, the cognitive school and the classical school have formed an incompatible relationship."

"Eh? Why?" Inuyama Heita asked curiously. "Because the methods of cultivation and exorcism are different." Qian Xiaoyi said: "The classical cultivation method is to constantly consolidate one's own cognition and form a unique logic. When one has cultivated to a certain level, one's spirit can be made indestructible. With some matching instruments of specific cognition, one can eliminate the ghosts one sees.

The cognitive school, on the other hand, breaks down and then builds up, completely discarding the traditional cognition of itself and replacing it with cognitive theory, so as to constantly change its mental state to adapt to the environment. Not only for itself, but also through this theory, the cognitive school can observe the target ghosts and monsters, and then eliminate the existence of the opponent from the root. If you want to make an analogy, it is like two gamblers tossing a coin. The classical school directly replaces the coin with a coin with the same two sides. The cognitive school trains its own vision and skills, and throws the result it wants accurately every time. "

"It sounds like the classic school is more powerful." Inuyama Heita expressed his actual thoughts: "If we only use skills to flip a coin, there is still a risk, right?"

"If it was only in the past when transportation was blocked, information was not circulated, and the masses were ignorant, then it was true." Qian Xiaoyi smiled and said, "The problem is that the classical school's methods are very fixed and rigid. No matter what the situation is, they can only rely on the coin they forged. There is no way to replace it with something else. Taoism is Taoism, and Buddhism is Buddhism. If they encounter an existence beyond what they have learned, then they are at a loss. As I said before, Western gods can't control Eastern ghosts."

"But the cognitive school can do it," Inuyama Heita pondered. "Once we get rid of the logic in religion and use the most essential cognitive theory to interpret ghosts, then no matter what kind of enemy it is, we can find its weaknesses and develop a strategy to attack it."

"That's right." Qian Xiaoyi nodded: "The Classical School practices to gain spiritual power or mana to fight against ghosts. This is the coin of the Classical School. In addition to this limitation, they have another unavoidable weakness."

"What is it?" Inuyama Heita was very curious.

"If we use cognitive theory to explain, the power of the classical school comes from the common cognition of the public and the self, and there is logic in it, such as Yin and Yang, the Five Elements, Tai Chi and Eight Diagrams, and so on." Qian Xiaoyi said: "If they knew the theory of the cognitive school at this time and believed in it a little bit, then I'm sorry, the 'power' they have gained from long-term practice will crack due to self-doubt, and even collapse instantly. The most important thing I want to tell you next is..."

"To those fanatical classicalists, cognitive theory is like heresy." Qian Xiaoyi said, "So don't promote cognitive theory in front of other exorcists. They will do everything they can to oppose you, or even... kill you."

(End of this chapter)