It'll blow their minds when they start researching chi kung and realise it's possible to draw in more energy by breathing and move it round the body. It's also possible to feel some kind of field around the body.
Auras and chakras don't sound so silly now do they.
"It'll blow those Chemists' minds when they start researching Alchemy and they realize the incredible power of mercury and lead to rejuvenate the body and lead to an elixir of youth!"
"It'll blow those Astronomers' minds when they start researching Astrology and the powerful effect of being born under auspicious constellations!"
__________
If the ancient guru knowledge is so great, what testable predictions does it offer, where "auras" are a causal mechanism?
In other words, not: "Thou must intake the golden aura of oats and fiber by eating some, to counter the dark brown blockage of your Pu-point." The folk remedy might well solve your constipation, but it wouldn't be evidence for the mythology around it.
Proper hatha yoga (not the modern hijacked nonsense) is literally a predictive method to experience deeper aspects of oneself, one part of which is a greater sensitivity to energy movements and corresponding fields.
There is already western research on kundalini, the most potent example of bioelectrical energy, and changes in energy potential experienced by meditators. Not to mention countless empirical self-reports (upon which a good scientist would keep an open mind).
But don't let facts get in the way of your prejudices.
It feels really great to wield the scientific method and feel supercilious to all other people and ideas that do not arise from such infallible reasoning, and sure the progress of humanity hockey sticked since empiricism took hold. But let's not forget that empiricism is limited by what we can/want/think to measure.
Like it's pretty well accepted that breathing exercises have physiological and mental health benefits but it took decades of consumerist appropriation of yoga and other techniques before academia properly found the motivation to earnestly investigate that yes breathing exercises are indeed good for you.
As someone who is a deep practitioner of martial arts and athletics, if the metaphors of qi gong and yoga were purely powerful visualisation aids that already provides more than enough tangible benefit. I don't need scientists to tell me that qi is good for my body - I can feel it.
So let's keep an open mind, our ancestors were anything but idiots.
> So let's keep an open mind, our ancestors were anything but idiots.
Just not so open our brains fall out.
Our ancestors were just like us, but fewer in number and inventing things from scratch. Miasma, spontaneous generation, Newtonian gravity, these were not people being idiots, and even though they have been shown to be wrong they are still close enough to still be useful today. Phlogiston also wasn't idiotic, but lacks utility vs being correct about oxygen.
One of the shared ways we failed then and now is that what sounds true isn't the same as what is true; the modern easy example of this is how easily many of us get fooled by LLMs, and I suspect that's how a lot of ancient religions grew, with additions and copy-errors evolving them to be maximally plausible-sounding to a human mind.
Lol no, this crank shit sounds dumb as fuck haha. Kamehameha!
> possible to draw in more energy by breathing and move it round the body
We already know what haemoglobin is thanks