Observations on Higher Taoist Practices

The following is a discussion by Mantak Chia on the higher levels

of Taoist Esoteric Yoga, tape recorded at the annual retreat in North

Andover, Mass. August 1982.

You endeavor in your practice here to open channels so that

your soul has some place to go. The Microcosmic Orbit provides a

crib for you, when you are a ‘baby’ so that your soul and spirit can

run on it. As you grow up a separate room is made ready to provide

you with privacy.

This room represents the 8 psychic channels. When you get a

bit older you are provided with yet a larger room, the 24 channels.

It is then that you are taught what is good and what is dangerous in

the lesser enlightenment, the greater enlightenment, the greatest

enlightenment, the sealing of the 5 senses and the congress of

heaven and earth. You are ‘six years old’ now and in school. It is

during this time that you acquire the ability to extend the spirit outside

of you. At first you may be able to let it go out about one foot

and then withdraw it. Gradually you can let it out more and more

until after some time you can let it roam about freely outside of your

body. This education of the soul and spirit is a tedious and time

consuming process, taking 30-35 years.

There may be some geniuses who can become adept at astral

projection in as little as 20 years, but there is always the risk that

madness can ensue with premature exposure to forces that one is

not yet ready for, madness of a sort that masters are afflicted with

and must keep secret. I know, because I have met many troubled

practitioners. In fact, M.D.s refer just such problems to me.

There are teachers who have had ill effects using their own particular

methods, but still continue to teach because they adamantly

maintain faith in those methods that they espouse in spite of how

they have suffered by them. The methods should serve the practitioners.

In this light, there is no Taoist method, but rather practioners

who make of Taoist Yoga their own individual methods. Tao is a word that signifies the natural way of life. Each of you must find

your Tao, open your channels and essentially make your system.

When you are the least bit successful in this endeavor you will

realize how truely priceless such knowledge is. You will learn how

to pity the very people who might have caused you great anguish,

as much by your own interpretation of their action as by their unwritten

display of their own troubled minds.

In first level work we learn how to relax to a much deeper degree

than we are ordinarily able to. Here we learn to ‘smile’ to the

heart and to fill the heart with ‘love’ and then let that ‘love’ radiate

throughout our whole system. You have to know how to love yourself.

You have to know how to love your organs. If you can’t love

your organs or yourself, how can you be able to love others?

It is best that everyone in a household practice. Then they can

all improve. If there is just one practitioner, he or she would probably

find energy drained by others that one lives with. It is as though

there were just one breadwinner in the house and everyone else is

living off of him. Were they all to work, they would all share equally

and all prosper equally.

The foundation for all subsequent practice is the Microcosmic

Orbit, Seminal Ovarian Kung Fu, Iron Shirt Chi Kung and Tai Chi

Chi Kung. Seminal Ovarian Kung Fu is important in sealing the

lower centers as the front door and the back door, the reproductive

organs and the anus, to prevent a leakage of energy. The Fusion of

Five Elements prevents further leakage through the five sense organs.

Iron Shirt Chi Kung is important in storing energy and Tai Chi

Chi Kung helps bring energy to your hands and legs. You can see

that what I teach is an entire system.