The Standing Post

Circulation of the Light: Essential metaphor of global sustainability?

This article examines the Daoist meditational metaphor of inner light circulation to understand the topology of global economics. Intriguing stuff.

• “As one of the people upheld as having the most insight into the global financial system, George Soros has made use of alchemy as a metaphor in a widely commented study (The Alchemy of Finance: reading the mind of the market, 1988). This metaphor is central to the Taoist meditation practices of China as described, for example, by Lu K’uan Yü (Taoist Yoga: alchemy and immortality, 1970). The key process is described in terms of the metaphor “circulation of the light”. This has notably been highlighted by Carl Jung and Richard Wilhelm with respect to a Chinese classic, The Secret of the Golden Flower (Tai Yi Jin Hua Zong Zhi). The Wilhelm translation is accompanied by a translation of another classic, the Book of Consciousness and Life (Hui Ming Ching) containing images indicative of the toroidal channel within which the “circulation of the light” takes place in that process.
• Attention has previously been drawn to the correspondence between the preoccupation of the current global civilization with “sustainability” and that of the preoccupation with “immortality” of past civilizations lasting centuries (Identity in Time: sustainability and immortality, 2010). The question explored here is the extent to which the metaphor of the “circulation of the light” is indeed an essential metaphor for comprehension of global sustainability at this time.”