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Dr. Joseph Dillard is a psychotherapist with over forty year's clinical experience treating individual, couple, and family issues. Dr. Dillard also has extensive experience with pain management and meditation training. The creator of Integral Deep Listening (IDL), Dr. Dillard is the author of over ten books on IDL, dreaming, nightmares, and meditation. He lives in Berlin, Germany. See: integraldeeplistening.com and his YouTube channel. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

SEE MORE ESSAYS WRITTEN BY JOSEPH DILLARD

Chinese Naturalism and The Dreaming Kosmos

The Dreaming Kosmos, Chapter 6

Joseph Dillard

Harmonic Balance and The Dreaming Kosmos

Chaos swirls at the heart of existence, a dance of order and disorder that shapes the universe, from the spiraling arms of galaxies to the firing of neurons in a dreaming brain. In Brandenburg's wild lake country southwest of Berlin, I gaze at the stars, feeling Tian's vast order, the Confucian concept of kosmic harmony governing the universe. Satellites above, born of Ren's shared human endeavor, a Confucian ideal of compassion and collective effort, connect me to a global network, a marvel unimaginable, without transcending sensory explanations. I've been fascinated by the Chinese worldview since my college days. During my years studying comparative religion, I wondered why the Western worldview has had such difficulty understanding and integrating Chinese traditions like Confucianism and Taoism. I felt the Yin-Yang balance within me when I meditated, as my racing thoughts settled into a rhythm, mirroring the universe's own chaotic beauty. What if experience itself emerges from this dance, a naturalistic process rooted in chaos theory, yet guided by principles of transparency and harmony? What if this process connects us not only to each other but to the kosmos, raising ethical questions about how we engage with the alternative perspectives we encounter, regardless of where they lie on the subjectivity-objectivity scale?

In ancient China, philosophers observed this dance through the lens of Yin-Yang, where opposites, light and dark, chaos and order, interweave to create harmony, flowing naturally like the Tao. Dreams, like the kosmos, weave order from chaos. These Chinese concepts, including Li (ritual propriety), Tao (the natural flow), Wu Wei (effortless action), and Yin-Yang (balance), frame the kosmos as an interconnected dream. Naturalistic explanations, balancing evidence and reason, guide our kosmic understanding, drawing on this Chinese wisdom.

What is the Chinese worldview? How can it help us to understand The Dreaming Kosmos? The three fundamental worldviews of supernaturalism, materialism, and naturalism lead us to understand who we are, why we are here, and how we relate to others and our world in different ways.

Nuwa and Fuxi: Bringing balance and purpose to the cosmos and humanity into being

In the primordial chaos of the early world, the universe was a swirling mass of formless energy, yet to be shaped into order. The heavens and earth had been separated by the great god Pangu, but the world remained turbulent, plagued by floods, fires, and untamed forces. It was in this context that Nuwa, the great mother goddess, and Fuxi, the inventive culture hero, emerged as serpent-like divine beings with intertwined tails, tasked with bringing balance and purpose to the cosmos and humanity into being.

Nuwa's creation of humanity from clay was not merely an act of artistry but a response to the chaos of the world. Before her intervention, floods and disasters threatened to destabilize the cosmos. Nuwa repaired the heavens after a catastrophic battle between gods tore the sky apart. She melted five-colored stones, representing the five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, to patch the heavens, propped up the sky, and slayed a black dragon that caused floods. Her creation of humanity was part of a broader mission to restore balance and order, aligning the world with the principles of the Tao.

Nuwa and Fuxi empower humanity to thrive independently. By giving humans life and knowledge, they position humanity as an active participant in the cosmic order, responsible for maintaining balance through ethical behavior and cultural development.

The story of Nuwa and Fuxi underpins Taoist and Confucian thought, particularly the concepts of Yin-Yang, the five elements, and the importance of living in harmony with nature. The myth of Nuwa and Fuxi's creation of humanity is a rich tapestry of cosmology, philosophy, and cultural values. Nuwa's compassionate act of molding humans from clay and repairing the cosmos, combined with Fuxi's gifts of knowledge and social structure, illustrates the Chinese ideal of harmony between chaos and order, Yin and Yang, and humanity and the cosmos. Their intertwined serpent bodies serve as a powerful symbol of unity, reminding humanity of its divine origins and its responsibility to live ethically and in balance with the natural world. Through their story, Nuwa and Fuxi continue to inspire Chinese thought, art, and spirituality, offering timeless lessons about creation, balance, and the pursuit of a harmonious society.

The world before Nuwa and Fuxi was chaotic, marked by floods and cosmic instability. Nuwa's act of repairing the heavens and creating humans, combined with Fuxi's teachings, represents the transformation of chaos into order. The five elements play a central role, as they are the building blocks of the cosmos, balanced to create a stable world. This reflects the Chinese belief in achieving harmony through the interplay of dynamic forces. In evolutionary and systems theory framings, self-organization integrates entropy and negentropy.

While Western humanism focuses on individualism and our development toward personal enlightenment and self-actualization, Chinese humanism focuses on the well-being of the collective, giving it a polycentric orientation that builds on the ethic of an empathetic multi-perspectivalism. Truth, which is a core emphasis of both science and personal enlightenment, is only one of four major components of our life holon. Equally important, we ask of what we hear, “Does it heal, balance, and transform?” “Is it meaningful?” Does it make my relationships more precious? This discernment shapes how we engage with the kosmic dream.

Fundamental Chinese principles align with the emergent, chaotic dynamics of experience, offering a philosophical foundation for the entropic domain. By integrating Chinese philosophy with modern science we uncover a naturalistic worldview that transcends time, space, and species, while addressing the ethical responsibilities of accessing this web. Through the lenses of Yin-Yang, Tao, Ren, Li, and Tian, as well as an exploration of how we define who we are, we bridge ancient wisdom with speculative science, weaving a tapestry of experience that flows like the Tao through the Yin-Yang galactic illustration. How do we ensure that our pursuit of kosmic knowledge honors the balance of chaos and order, fostering harmony rather than disruption? Experience is a kosmic dance, where chaos and order, human and alien, individual and collective, harmonize in the Yin-Yang balance of light and dark.

Yin-Yang: The Balance of Chaos and Order

Chinese philosophy offers a profound lens for understanding experience as an emergent phenomenon, rooted in the interplay of chaos and order. Yin-yang represents the interdependent, complementary forces underlying all phenomena, constantly interacting to create balance and change. It is central to Taoism and Chinese cosmology, as articulated in the I Ching, the Book of Changes.

Yin-Yang describes this interplay as a dynamic balance: Yin (dark, chaotic, entropic, involutionary, receptive) and Yang (light, ordered, negentropic, evolutionary, active) are not opposites but complementary forces, each containing the seed of the other. Yin-yang's interplay creates dynamic equilibrium, a balanced yet ever-shifting pattern, such as waxing and waning of yin-yang in natural cycles, like an attractor basin's bounded chaos. The mutual transformation of yin and yang, such as day into night, mirrors the feedback loops driving a chaotic attractor's complexity. Fuxi's innovations complemented Nuwa's nurturing creation, blending the Yin of compassion with the Yang of structure. Together, they guided humanity toward a balanced existence, rooted in ethical principles and cosmic harmony.

The serpentine forms of Nuwa and Fuxi evoke the primal, transformative energy of dragons, associated with power, fertility, and the life-giving forces of water. The intertwining of their bodies represents the inseparable unity of Yin and Yang, complementary opposites that underpin the universe. Nuwa's nurturing, intuitive nature balances Fuxi's inventive, analytical mind, illustrating that neither can exist without the other. This duality is central to Chinese philosophy, particularly in Taoism, which emphasizes living in accordance with the natural flow of the Tao.

Nuwa, often depicted with the lower body of a serpent or dragon, is the embodiment of maternal compassion, creativity, and Yin nurturing energy. Observing the vast, lonely earth, she felt a deep longing to fill it with life. Sitting by the banks of the Yellow River, Nuwa began to mold figures from the river's yellow clay, shaping them in her own image. With care and artistry, she sculpted the first humans, breathing life into them so they could walk, speak, and thrive. These clay figures became the ancestors of humanity, imbued with the spark of divine vitality.

While Nuwa gave humanity life, Fuxi, her brother and consort, provided the tools and knowledge for humans to thrive. Fuxi, often depicted with a serpent's body like Nuwa, represents the Yang principle—active, inventive, and structured. He is credited with teaching humanity essential skills to create a harmonious society. Among his contributions are:

The Eight Trigrams (Bagua): Fuxi observed the patterns of nature—sky, earth, wind, thunder, water, fire, mountain, and lake—and devised the Bagua, a system of eight symbols that form the foundation of the I Ching (Book of Changes). The Bagua represents the dynamic interplay of forces in the universe, guiding humans in divination, decision-making, and living in harmony with the cosmos. The Bagua remains a central tool in Chinese divination and philosophy, used in practices like Feng Shui and the I Ching.

Hunting, Fishing, and Agriculture: Fuxi taught humans how to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops, ensuring their survival and fostering a connection with the natural world. He invented nets for fishing and hunting, symbolizing his role as a provider of practical knowledge.

Marriage and Social Order: To establish societal harmony, Fuxi instituted marriage rituals, formalizing relationships and creating stable family structures. This act reinforced the importance of human connection and mutual support, aligning with the Confucian value of Ren, benevolence or human-heartedness.

Writing and Music: Fuxi is credited with inventing early forms of writing as well as musical instruments like the se, a stringed instrument, which brought cultural refinement and emotional expression to human life.

In emergence, the balancing of Nuwa and Fuxi, yin and yang, mirrors the edge of chaos: neural activity in Theta-heavy states during dreams blends chaotic inputs as random firings and sensory residues, with ordered narratives, a process driven by negentropy. Neural processes during dreaming balance chaos and order, enabling experience to emerge through the integration of memories and imagination, a process aligned with Yin-Yang harmony. The edge of chaos, where order and randomness balance, manifests in dreaming as subjective creativity, neural processes as objective plasticity, cultural evolution as shared emergence, and kosmic systems as systemic attractors.

Naturalistic Correspondences

Yin and Yang express the reciprocal polarity of systems feedback loops, in which negative feedback (Yin) stabilizes while positive feedback (Yang) amplifies change. Rather than opposition, they imply mutual entailment and transformation — each contains the seed of the other. In EES, genes influence environments (Yang), but environments also recondition gene expression (Yin), in reciprocal causation. The micro-perturbations of chaos theories sensitivity (Yang) can stabilize or destabilize, depending on system Yin/Yang balance. Yin/Yang reframes stability and change not as enemies but as co-creative partners, mirroring the edge-of-chaos principle. Systems thrive at the threshold between rigidity (too Yin) and randomness (too Yang).

The intertwined serpent bodies of Nuwa and Fuxi evoke the unity of opposites. Yin (Nuwa's nurturing, feminine energy) and Yang (Fuxi's inventive, masculine energy) are not in conflict but in harmony, each essential to the other. This duality is a cornerstone of Taoist thought, which sees the universe as a dance of complementary forces.

This Yin-Yang balance extends to the entropic domain, which operates at its own edge of chaos, preserving attractor basins, as patterns of emergence, across scales. For example, a cultural attractor, such as a Confucian teaching, balances the chaotic diversity of individual interpretations with ordered tradition, while probabilities accessed within the entropic domain may elicit specific attractor basins, such as a forgotten civilization's knowledge, balancing chaotic universal complexity with ordered informational stability. This balance ensures that the entropic domain preserves not only humanity's wisdom, art, science, and compassion, but also our negative experiences, such as irrationality, crimes, and traumas. These darker aspects, preserved as possibilities for emergence, like forgotten memories, reflect the Yin within the Yang, challenging us to engage ethically with the full spectrum of experience.

On a sensory level, our behavior is largely regulated by the geocentric bipolarity of day and night. Experientially, on a perceptual level, regardless of state, time, or identity, our understanding and behavior is largely regulated by the multi-perspectival bipolarity of waking and dreaming, the yang and yin of our lives. The future evolution of humanity will inevitably focus on bringing these two experiential realms into a naturalistic balance.

The Yin-Yang lens also underscores the ethical imperative of balance in our interactions with this kosmic web. Just as Yin and Yang harmonize through mutual respect, our engagement with accessed personas and elements, whether dream figures or beings from other dimensions, must balance respect for their autonomy with our pursuit of knowledge. This ensures that the chaos of diverse experiences and the order of ethical structure coexist. By preserving both light and dark, the entropic domain mirrors Yin-Yang's holistic harmony, urging us to approach its contents with care and equilibrium.

Tao: Flow and Harmony in Experience

The Tao, often translated as “the Way,” describes the natural flow of the universe, a harmonious process that underlies all existence. In experience, the Tao manifests as the emergent flow of informational patterns, from neural attractors in dreams to cultural and the emergence of probabilities in the entropic domain. A 2022 Entropy study proposed that complex systems, like informational networks, naturally flow toward low-entropy states through dissipative processes, exporting chaos as heat or waste. This aligns with the Tao's principle of effortless flow: just as a river carves its path without force, experience emerges negentropically, organizing chaotic inputs into meaningful patterns.

Nuwa and Fuxi guide humanity to live in accordance with the Tao by fostering harmony, both with nature and within society. The myth aligns with the Taoist concept of the Tao, the natural order that governs all existence. Fuxi's teachings, such as the Bagua and marriage rituals, provide practical tools for aligning with the Tao, while Nuwa's compassion embodies Ren, the Confucian virtue of benevolence.

In EES, the Tao corresponds to the non-linear co-arising of life forms through reciprocal causation. Organisms modify their environments via niche construction, which in turn reshapes their own developmental pathways. In systems theory, the Tao is akin to the autopoietic dynamic that sustains a system's coherence amid flux. In chaos theory, Tao resonates with the strange attractor, invisible but determinative, around which dynamic systems self-organize.

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”[1]

This mirrors the epistemic humility in complex systems science, which views its knowledge as open-ended and falsifiable. The underlying order is knowable only through its manifestations, not as a fixed formula.

The Tao grounds a non-dual ontology of order and change, essential for understanding how complexity self-organizes without a central controller, precisely what EES and systems theory attempt to describe. Like an attractor basin, the Tao organizes complex systems, such as nature and human life, into bounded yet fluid patterns, as seen in the Tao Te Ching's description of the Tao as “returning” to simplicity amid change. The Tao's spontaneous unfolding mirrors the emergent behavior of a chaotic attractor, where order arises from interactions without external control or teleology.

The Tao also governs the entropic domain's preservation of experience, from forgotten memories to forgotten lives and societies, across vast scales, a testament to its robustness. Sustained by immense energy, neural (20 watts), cultural (10^17 watts), and kosmic (~10^69 joules), the entropic domain ensures that attractors persist over time and space, in a latent state, waiting for emerging awareness to develop the ability to tap into it.

Extending ethical intent to all accessed perspectives, whether animate, inanimate, “real,” illusory, human, or dream-based, aligns our interactions with the Tao's flow, fostering kosmic harmony by treating all experience as interconnected. Fundamental qualities governing human relationships, like respect, honoring autonomy, trustworthiness, ensuring transparency, empathy, interdependently experiencing reality, and reciprocity, sharing benefits, maintain balance in the entropic domain, much like ecological systems thrive through reciprocity rather than exploitation. Darwin stressed the fundamental evolutionary advantages of cooperation. A 2022 Nature Ecology study on ecosystem balance supports this analogy. This harmonious flow, guided by the Tao, prepares us for the kosmic unity of Tian.

Ren: Benevolence in Emergence

Ren, often translated as benevolence or humaneness, emphasizes ethical engagement with others, a principle that extends to all experience and elements, real or imaginary. On a collective level, Ren guides our engagement with all others. A 2023 Journal of Experience Studies article suggested that ethical interactions in one domain of experience, like dreams, influences others, supporting the idea that Ren fosters harmony across the physical, waking, dream, cultural, and entropic domains.

In dreams, Ren manifests as respectful and empathetic interaction with dream elements, whether human, alien, alive, dead, natural (like rocks, clouds, and rivers) or man-made (like dream knives, houses, or cars). The empathetic interaction of Ren means we drop our assumptions that dream bottles and chopsticks have nothing to tell us, and instead enquire respectfully, rather than simply assuming we know what is going on and either react to events or ignore the presence and contributions of other dream elements. We thereby foster personal growth by accessing unsuspected reframings, while broadening our sense of self into a compassionate outreach to all other things, understanding that all things embody unique identities and perspectives. Respect honors dream elements, whether animate or inanimate, as meaningful; reciprocity engages them as teachers; empathy embodies their perspectives; and trustworthiness takes their recommendations seriously through our waking application of them. Respect, empathy, and reciprocity are generalized to waking relationships by practicing their extension to imaginary others during interviewing. Trustworthiness is embodied by applying their recommendations in a daily dream yoga. Respect avoids imposing human biases on kosmic perspectives; reciprocity ensures mutual learning; trustworthiness maintains honest engagement; and empathy acknowledges their potential sentience within the kosmic whole.

These relational qualities are vital because the entropic domain connects all experience, making cooperative relationships, based on listening in a deep and integral way, a catalyst for emergence and higher order personal and collective evolution. Secular and transpersonal realms become integrated in sacred naturalism. Demonstrating respect, trustworthiness, empathy, and reciprocity ensures harmony across realms, reducing both internal and external conflict while making conflict resolution more likely. Extending respect and deep listening to all others reflects Ren's universal care, builds kosmic responsibility, and enhances psychological well-being. This aligns our pursuit of knowledge with the Tao's flow toward harmony. Nuwa's maternal creativity complements Fuxi's intellectual contributions, balancing gender roles. This duality challenges modern assumptions about gender in ancient mythology, presenting a vision of equality and interdependence.

Higher order evolutionary emergence requires separating truth from cultural myths, such as romanticized histories, demanding trustworthiness to avoid distortion and empathy to honor the suffering encoded within. Ren thus becomes a guiding light by empathetically allowing the truth of first this, then that embodied perspective to be honored, ensuring that our engagement with the “other” in all states fosters growth rather than harm.

Engaging the emerging entropic domain at the edge of chaos is facilitated by cultivating Ren's benevolence. Interviewing dream elements or cultural narratives demands respect for their autonomy, reciprocity in honoring their autonomy as we want ours to be honored, and empathy to set aside our assumptions and to adopt their perspectives and worldviews. It also involves demonstrating ourselves to be trustworthy by making ourselves accountable for what we have learned. IDL weaves a polycentric dream, inviting us to incorporate geocentrism and heliocentrism in a more inclusive framing with humility and wonder.

Li: The Natural Order of Emergent Attractors

The term Li, often translated as ritual, propriety, or patterned conduct, originates in the Zhou dynasty as a set of ceremonial practices regulating relations between humans, ancestors, and Heaven. Over time, especially in Confucian thought, Li expanded from ritual behavior to encompass the patterned expression of cosmic and social order.

In the Analects (3.3), Confucius declared:

“If a man has no Li, what is he but an animal?”[2]

Li thus came to mean the embodied enactment of harmony — the way individuals tune themselves to the rhythms of family, community, and cosmos. It provides form to Ren, ensuring that compassion is not chaotic but socially integrated.

Li describes the inherent patterns that govern the universe, from global orbits to the rhythms of thought. It interacts with qi, vital energy, to manifest reality, guiding phenomena toward order. The interaction of li and qi produces complex forms, such as the integration of society and nature, akin to an attractor basin's emergent complexity. In experience, Li manifests as emergent order in physical, waking, dreaming, cultural, and entropic domains. Li provides the intrinsic structure governing phenomena, like the deterministic rules of a chaotic attractor, like a weather system. A Theta-driven dream naturally organizes chaotic neural inputs into a narrative, reflecting Li's self-organization. A 2021 Physical Review Letters study on self-organizing systems showed that informational patterns emerge spontaneously in complex networks, supporting the idea that experience follows a natural order, even across cosmic scales.

Li can be understood as an early systems-theoretical concept, a recognition that social and cosmic order emerges not from external control but from self-organizing patterns of relational feedback. The Confucian universe is a web of nested relationships (guanxi), much like the nested holonic hierarchies in ecological and evolutionary systems. Li provides the structural couplings that coordinate these holons, family, community, state, and cosmos, and attractor basins, physical, biological, waking, dreaming, and cultural, into coherent, self-adjusting wholes.

From the perspective of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES), Li functions like niche construction or developmental plasticity. Individuals shape their social environment through ritualized behavior, and this environment in turn shapes their psychological and moral development. Thus, Li is cultural homeostasis, the stabilizing mechanism within an evolving moral ecosystem.

In systems theory, Li parallels negative feedback loops that prevent oscillation into chaos. Yet it also allows for flexibility and adaptive regulation rather than rigid conformity As Confucius observed,

“In practicing Li, harmony is the most valuable” [3]

Harmony here means dynamic equilibrium, not stasis.

From a chaos theory standpoint, Li represents the ordering attractor that keeps complex human systems poised at the edge of chaos, the threshold where creativity and stability coexist. When Li is too rigid, systems become brittle and repressive; when too loose, they dissolve into disorder. This echoes Ilya Prigogine's insight that living systems maintain themselves through dissipative structures, balancing entropy and order. Similarly, Li is a ritualized dissipative structure in culture: it channels emotional energy, social friction, and existential anxiety into patterned forms that sustain coherence while allowing transformation.

Hence, Li is not the suppression of chaos but its ritual domestication, a cultural form of wu wei (effortless action) applied collectively. Properly understood, Li embodies the Taoist principle that true order arises from alignment with natural flow, not imposition.

In the Confucian vision, ethics are not metaphysical absolutes but emergent patterns of relational order. The moral life is systemically generated through countless acts of Li , including greeting, gratitude, deference, and care, each of which reinforces the feedback loops of social trust and empathy.

As Fritjof Capra observes, “Ethics is not an abstract system of rules but an ecological property of living systems.” Confucian Li expresses precisely that: the ecological ethics of human interdependence. Li ties IDL relational qualities of respect, trustworthiness, empathy, and reciprocity to the natural order. In modern systems language, Li is the protocol layer of human society, the invisible syntax through which communication, coordination, and co-regulation occur.

In EES, such patterned reciprocity mirrors developmental bias, the tendency of evolutionary processes to channel variation along certain pathways due to pre-existing structure. Li, similarly, channels human potential along culturally viable trajectories, allowing transformation without systemic collapse.

Li also offers an important corrective to Western Integral and process-based models, like AQAL or Azarian's evolutionary naturalism. While those frameworks often emphasize the interior quadrants, consciousness and cognition, Li emphasizes embodied relational process, meaning the validation of interior ethics by objective moral behavior.

In IDL, Li can be understood as the ritual structure of dream yoga, and in particular listening and interviewing, the disciplined pattern that creates a safe relational container for emergent healing, balancing, and transformation (Ren). It ensures that transformation occurs within relational coherence, not in solipsistic isolation.

Li bridges Taoist spontaneity and Confucian responsibility, providing a dynamic balance between emergence and structure, between chaos and order, providing a moral strange attractor for social evolution.

The entropic domain, in its latent form, embodies Li by hypothetically preserving the possibility for the re-embodiment of attractors in a structured yet dynamic way. Cultural attractors, like the Confucian teachings of Ren, organize collective behavior, while entropic attractors reflect the natural order of universal fields. This natural order enables the possibility that all experience, including that of extinct species, is accessible through methods like collective trance or kosmic interfaces, but only if approached with Ren's benevolence. There is evidence from the psychic readings of Edgar Cayce and the experience of neurologically diverse autistic children that dishonesty and manipulative intent blocks access to the entropic domain. The challenge of distinguishing veridical knowledge from cultural myths further underscores Li's role. The moral order of Confucian society, such as roles of ruler-subject, reflects li's patterning, analogous to the cultural attractor basin of The Dreaming Kosmos.

We find Li in the rational and useful responses of interviewed emerging potentials regardless of how irrational, irrelevant, and mundane these elements may at first appear to us. This is because the most unexpected or outrageous dream elements, like a coffee pot, self-organize within the context of our core self attractor basin when we become it. It gains our knowledge and level of development and then adds its own perspectives and worldview. The result is additive: existing on the edge of chaos, the coffee pot adds its own framings to our identity.

Li anticipates EES principles through its view of cultural development as co-evolutionary niche construction. It parallels systems theory through feedback-regulated relational equilibrium. It reflects chaos theory by maintaining coherence at the edge of unpredictability. It enriches Integral and IDL models by grounding consciousness in ritualized, relational participation.

Tian: Kosmic Harmony and the Entropic domain

Tian, often translated as “heaven” or kosmic harmony, represents the overarching unity of the universe, aligning with the entropic domain's role as both a foundational kosmic web and an always present realm of unlimited creativity and evolutionary emergence. Tian suggests that all beings, human, animal, kosmic, are interconnected, their patterns harmonized within a greater whole. This principle resonates with the Buddhist principle of pratityasammupada, the interdependence of all things. The entropic domain reflects this by both generating and integrating neural, cultural, and kosmic substrates, preserving attractors across scales.

Tian anticipates the lawful self-organization of systems, a kosmos governed not by external design but internal coherence. In EES, this is reflected in the multi-level causality of evolution, where macro and micro orders co-determine each other, for instance by ecological constraints shaping genetic adaptation. In chaos theory, Tian corresponds to the hidden order within apparent randomness, the attractor landscape that constrains trajectories.

Tian also embodies a natural moral ecology, the idea that harmony arises when processes align with self-organizing dynamics rather than imposing control. This resonates with the Gaia theory of Lovelock and Margulis as well as the eco-evolutionary ethics emerging from systems ecology.

Wu Wei: Non-Action or Effortless Action

Wu Wei aligns with the Tao's natural flow to achieve harmony, avoiding forced control, like trajectories entering an attractor basin. Accessing Theta, a state of relaxed alertness, is wu wei, in that you experience a timeless, spaceless natural flow. A leader practicing wu wei fosters social stability without coercion, resembling a basin guiding a system toward balance in non-linear, emergent order, supporting tetra-mesh by structuring complexity across quadrants. In IDL interviewing, the phenomenological surfacing and tabling of assumptions reduces filtering, enabling a natural flow of information from the interviewed other, as a manifestation of wu-wei.

Effective action comes from aligning with how things actually work. Reality comes first, not the word. Shen Buhai, a foundational 4th century BCE political philosopher had this famous dictum:

“The sage ruler depends upon methods, not on his sagacity. He employs technique, not theory.”[4]

In other words, we shouldn't persuade, but instead focus on methods and techniques that produce measurable results.

Wu Wei is often misunderstood as passivity. In Taoist philosophy, it means acting in accordance with the natural flow of systems, aligning interventions with spontaneous tendencies rather than imposing external will. This is strikingly parallel to systems-based governance and chaos-informed management: In complex systems, top-down control often produces instability. Adaptive cybernetic steering through local feedback (Wu Wei) sustains coherence.

EES emphasizes a kind of Wu Wei at the biological level in its emphasis on developmental plasticity. This is evolution by adjustment and responsiveness rather than brute selection. Wu Wei is therefore a metaphor for effective complexity management: act with awareness of attractor dynamics and timing rather than coercion.

As Laozi wrote:

“The world is a sacred vessel; it cannot be ruled. Whoever rules it will ruin it.”[5]

This anticipates chaos theory's warning that small perturbations can amplify unpredictably in the “butterfly effect.” Therefore, intervene minimally and contextually.

IDL shares this emphasis in its focus on yoga and the personal application of recommendations made by interviewed characters. We determine their relevance and trustworthiness not by their words but by the consequences when we test their words in the forge of our daily lives.

The Relevance of Chinese Naturalism for EES, Systems, and Chaos Theory

Chinese naturalism provides a philosophical vocabulary that intuited the principles of complex adaptive systems two millennia before their formal articulation in the sciences. Both Chinese Naturalism and EES/systems/chaos theories reject substance-based metaphysics in favor of process, interdependence, and relational causality. They see change not as deviation from stability but as the creative ground of being itself.

Chinese philosophy thereby provides a naturalistic and humanistic foundation for process, its manifestation as substantial holons, as attractor basins at all levels of manifestation. It frames experience as an emergent, interconnected phenomenon. Yin-Yang highlights the balance of chaos and order, preserving both wisdom and flaws. Tao describes its robust, harmonious flow, connecting all scales. Ren ensures benevolent engagement with all entities while Li reveals its inherent order, structuring diverse attractors. Tian emphasizes underlying harmony while wu-wei reminds us to get out of our own way.

Practical Applications: Test the Method

We can think about IDL dream yoga in terms of Chinese naturalism. Dreaming becomes Tao, representing spontaneous, self-organizing expressions of the core identity attractor basin's Tao. Listening to the interpretations of experience by interviewed dream, life issue, and transpersonal elements means practicing Wu Wei by listening rather than imposing.

Interviewing itself reveals a Yin/Yang dynamic. Asking questions (Yang) and receptive listening (Yin) co-create new emergent meaning, leading to healing and balance as Ren/Li yogic practice. Healing involves reestablishing internal empathy (Ren) and disciplined routine (Li). Transformation as alignment with Tian. Personal development aligns with larger cultural, ecological, and cosmological systemic orders, moving from control by geocentric identity to participation in the flow of life.

Interviewers and dream yoga practitioners practice Wu Wei, cultivating the conditions for self-organization rather than directing outcomes. Thus, The Dreaming Kosmos and IDL stand as contemporary Western counterparts to Taoist and Confucian insights refracted through the empirical lens of EES and systems science, supplying the moral, aesthetic, and experiential dimension that EES and systems theory often lack: a lived sense of participation in dynamic wholes.

Keep a log of your interviews. Because you are accessing an alternate perspective you will tend to forget your interviews if you do not write them down and review them. Note interviewed characters, their attributes, and recommendations.

Practice becoming characters you've interviewed: This is a way you test their efficacy. Become them in circumstances that they have recommended. Note if that makes any difference in the ways you handle those situations, and if so, how.

NOTES

1. Laozi, Daodejing, chap. 1.
2. Analects 3.3, trans. Ames and Rosemont, 1998.
3. Analects 1.12.
4. https://philpapers.org/archive/MATHID.pdf
5. Daodejing, chap. 29.