Great Clarity , heaven

The history of this heaven—of what has been written about it in different times and in different contexts—reveals many details on the nature of the Taiqing tradition. This chapter examines some aspects of this history the use of the word taiqing to denote an inner spiritual state, the features of the heaven of Great Clarity mentioned in several Taiqing and Daoist sources, and the destiny that this heaven faced when it lost its status as the highest celestial realm. 

Before the term taiqing, or Great Clarity, came to designate one of the several heavens distinguished in Daoist cosmography, it denoted an inner... 

As shown by some of the passages quoted above, the inner state of Great Clarity corresponds externally to a pure space where the saintly man wanders unrestrained. Ge Hong s Inner Chapters also mentions the Great Clarity as a heaven in which one roams freely after achieving transcendence ... 

The deities of the heaven of Great Clarity generated and handed down the alchemical scriptures to each other before they were written in a form comprehensible to mankind. The versions of those scriptures transmitted to the world are inferior and partial counterparts of those divine prototypes. According to Ge Hong, the Scripture of Great Clarity that circulated at his time was the last part of a longer text to which human beings have no access ... 

The Supreme Great One is the Father of the Dao and exists before Heaven and Earth. He resides above the Nine Heavens (jiutian), within the Great Clarity, outside the Eight Obscurities, inside the Subtle Tenuity. Laozi zhongjing, sec. i)... 

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