An array was, in essence, a peculiar kind of technique. To explain it properly, one had to begin with the Mystic Gate's understanding of the world.
To the Mystic Gate, the foundation of the world was qi, also called the primordial energy of heaven and earth. That energy was material, and its combinations formed the entire world.
Qi—the primordial energy of heaven and earth—was the most fundamental building block of the world.
The ways in which that energy moved arose largely from the interplay of the Three Laws of Heaven within the Nine Heavenly Human Arts.
Yet while the primordial energy of heaven and earth was real, the "I" that imagined itself separate from heaven and earth was not.
People were born, aged, fell ill, and died. At birth, the "I" was profoundly ignorant, like a bewildered child. In old age, as the body declined, the "I" grew dull and rigid. Even in the prime of life, it remained subject to outside influences.
When the eyes failed, one could not see. When the ears failed, one could not hear clearly.
Compared with the material world formed from the truly existing primordial energy of heaven and earth, this "I," forever subject to change, was terribly false.
That was why the Mystic Gate had a goal: "Borrowed Falsehood, Cultivated Truth." It was also the original meaning of cultivation.
One cast aside that false "I" and unearthed, refined, and cultivated the true "I." This true self had to transcend not only the body's birth, aging, sickness, and death, but heaven and earth as well.
That was cultivation.
Within the Mystic Gate, this new "true self" took two broad forms. One was called the "Solar Spirit"; the other, the "True Form."
The Solar Spirit path recognized that the body's continued existence was not the