Taoist Yoga and the Kundalini By Michael Winn

Although Hatha Yoga became known in America in the 1930’s, it

was not until the late 1960’s and 70’s that attention began to focus

on the higher stages of yogic development in which a phenomenon

occurs known as “awakening of the kundalini”. The kundalini

is the sudden release of vast untapped reservoirs of creative energy

that transports an ordinary human being into states of higher

consciousness and bestows upon him or her unique creative powers. A person who has attained full command of this cosmic energy

is said by the Hindus to have attained a state of “samadhi”.

The Buddhists call it “nirvana”, while the Chinese refer to it as the

“Tao”. In the west it might correspond with what Freud alluded to

as an “oceanic feeling”, but among the prophets of the New Age it

is known as “superconsciousness”. None, of course, agree as to

the best path to achieve this awakening, but the parallel among

them is distinct.

In India, the kundalini is symbolized by a serpent awakening from

a deep slumber and rising up from the base of the human spine in

a spiralling motion through the seven energy centers (chakras) of

the body, purifying and unblocking the powers of each center as it

rises. For millenium this same serpent has been a universal symbol

for wisdom and healing. Nearly every Egyptian pharoah is depicted

in statues with a serpent emerging from the third eye in the

forehead.

Today, modern western doctors wear on their white laboratory

coats the Greek symbol of healing energy, two serpents spiralling

up a staff. The Taoists in China revered the snake as a wise animal,

but symbolized the Tao more abstractly, with the yin and yang

symbols spiralling into each other. It is important to note the Taoist

yin and yang spiral was contained within a circle, while the traditional

Hindu kundalini serpent spiralled vertically up to the crown

chakra atop the head.

The Taoists referred to in this essay, are the masters of Taoist

Esoteric practices, whose traditionally secret methods were studied

by Master Mantak Chia. This is not to be confused with the

Taoist religions, whose priests combined elements of Buddhism,

Esoteric Taoism, and Chinese culture (folk beliefs, confucianism)

in order to maintain a popular base.

The symbolic difference translates into a real difference in terms

of the meditational approach aimed at awakening the release of

this cosmic energy. The Hindu yogis emphasized raising the

kundalini energy up to a higher transcendant level, while the Taoist

masters emphasized harmonious circulation of this energy between

chakras. The Taoist emphasis was on achieving perfect balance

between yin and yang forces within the body rather than on leaping

beyond human form into divine states.

It was not enough for the Taoist masters to simply know that the

Tao, the highest state of oneness existed; the problem was how to gain experience of it in a safe, systematic, verifiable, and useful

fashion. Chinese pragmatism worked its way into Chinese metaphysics.

One did not raise up one’s consciousness toward Heaven

without rooting it equally deep in the Earth. This need for “grounding”

defined the development of Taoist yoga. Tai Chi Chuan is nothing

more than a walking yoga with self-defense and healing applications.

Unlike Indian yoga, one’s feet never leave the ground, increasing

one’s “rootedness” in the earth energy and safeguarding

against excessive kundalini energy in the head.

It is this excessive energy in the head that often leads to illusions

of spiritual advancement, also known as spiritual egotism. It

is not unlike an intellectual who spends all his energy arriving at

conceptual solutions to the world’s problems, but ignores the messages

from his own body about its poor health or finances. In a

similar vein, Wilhelm Reich once complained that yogis would often

drive energies into their head chakras without removing the

“body armor”, or tension, plated about the lower body. He argued

their heads would pulsate with higher energy, giving the illusion of

cosmic serenity, but progress to full circulation of the cosmic energy

would remain blocked.

The Esoteric Taoist system guards against this danger by beginning

with the very lowest chakra energy, the survival needs, and

constantly reintegrating it with the higher energies that are developed.

The Microcosmic Orbit is a perfect example, as it circulates

past all seven chakras in the body. Likewise, the Taoists don’t advocate

sudden abandonment of all one’s ego. Depending on the

individual, a secure job and loving family may supply the best

grounding for spiritual growth.

The Taoists advocate moderation, not asceticism. They teach

that if a desire is destructive, it will drop away naturally as the body’s

chi flow comes into balance. The goal is to bring the body, mind,

and spirit into harmony with the world, not to escape from it. Tradition

has it many Tao masters would spend decades moving among

the common people. Only after teaching them how to balance their

anger with love, how to live more harmoniously, would they disappear

up into the mountains to work on a very high level of meditation

that required deep absorption in nature.

This harmonizing of the forces that fuse man, society, and nature

together is evident in Chinese classics such as the I Ching.

Written by esoteric Taoist masters, it simply expresses in poetic form the subtle changes in the balance of chi energies they observed

in themselves, others, and nature. The proper approach to understanding

the I Ching at its deepest level is to train oneself using

Taoist esoteric yoga to read the changing elements within oneself.

In the higher levels of Taoist meditation the practitioner grounds

him/herself in the body by channeling higher energies into the acupuncture

meridian system, and circulating them throughout the

entire body after refining the energies into a digestible form. The

practitioner has a detailed map of the body’s subtle nerve system

into which he guides the released energy. He also is given precise

methods for transforming his physical, emotional, and mental makeup

at different stages of growth using this new energy. Each individual

must tailor this “internal technology” to his specific needs

and problems. Esoteric Taoism doesn’t solve ego-created problems

by demanding the surrendering of one’s individuality to a larger

group of guru.

The only devotion it demands is a disciplined committment to

leading a healthy and harmonious life. Taoist Esoteric yoga is compatible

with any religious belief. The language of Taoism is not defined

by any set of mental “beliefs”, but by the “experience” of increasingly

subtle and powerful forms of chi energy. No mythological

entities or divine symbols are evoked. But if someone chooses

to identify this chi with the Christian notion of the Holy Spirit, it will

not adversely affect the Taoist method of chi transformation. This

holds true at the very highest levels of practice. This same Christian

could draw accurate parallels between the Biblical ascent of

Elijah on a flaming chariot into Heaven with the Taoist formula for

the seventh stage meditation, “Reunion of Man and Heaven”. Similar

parallels could be drawn with Buddhist Hindu, or Qabalist symbols

of spiritual advancement. The point the Taoist masters were

making is that the pattern of chi flow and balance is similar in all

men, regardless of interpretive belief about their religious experiences.

Taoist yoga is a theologically neutral method for preparing the

dense physical and mental body to consciously receive a more

powerful dose of cosmic yin and yang energies. Imagine the average

human being is accustomed to functioning on 110 volts. He

cannot suddenly absorb into his conscious mind the kundalini energy,

which is powered by the subatomic nuclear energy that binds

the universe together and is made visible in the radiant heat and light of the sun. To even double the received voltage to 220 re quires

considerable conditioning of the body. The more accessible form

of Kundalini power is human sexual energy. But to absorb anything

above your accustomed voltage is dangerous, like being struck by

lightning without a ground wire to the earth. The Taoist system of

circulating chi, from the Microcosmic Orbit up to the level “reunite

Man and Heaven”, is a grounding rod for Kundalini energy.

Modern researchers into spiritual phenomena see the Kundilini

as a possible mechanism to describe radical leaps in the evolution

of human consciousness. The form in which it spontaneously occurs

(i.e., without special yogic training) in nature would produce,

in successful cases of evolution, creative genius and in the unsuccessful,

madness. The classic account is Gopi Krishna’s autobiographical

“Awakening of the Kundalini’ (Shambhala Press).

Gopi Krishna was an Indian railroad official who in 1937 experienced

abrupt, dramatic physical and psychic changes as a result

of his yoga practice. Energy began dancing and coursing powerfully

through his body, but his initial wonderment and bliss soon

faded. He was nearly incapacitated by it as the energy would not

stop, sometimes leaving him tormented and sleepless for day on

end. Only after twelve years of this nightmare existence was he

able to learn how to balance the energy within his body and use it in

a newly discovered creative life as a poet and author of a dozen

books.

The Kundalini Research Institute in New York City reports worldwide

over a hundred cases each year of individuals who cannot

explain the uncontrollable release of energies in their body, often

accompanied by days of sleeplessness, ringing and hissing noises

in the ears and flashes of light inside the body. Some are students

of yoga or meditation whose teachers abandon them after seeing

they are powerless to diagnose or help the condition.

For this reason kundalini-oriented practices have earned a reputation

as dangerous, radical, and unsafe for most westerners seeking

what they falsely perceive as the fastest path to enlightenment.

A number of students suffering from kundalini-like side effects

of different meditational practices have come to Mantak Chia for

advice. Usually after doing the Microcosmic Orbit or simply putting

the tongue to the palate and thinking down, these unpleasant symptoms

disappear.

But the Chinese esoteric system is not limited to therapeutic

uses. Practitioners of other techniques, sitting, mantra, pranayama,

can achieve a high level of awareness and a balanced experience

of kundalini-like energies. But several have come to Master Chia

and privately complained that they don’t know what to do with all

their energy, or how to transform it to an even higher level. One

yogi wrote Master Chia that even after doing yoga for 18 years, 12

of them in an advanced practice of kundalini yoga, he had never

felt such a “pure and distilled energy” as he experienced in the

Microcosmic Orbit and first level of Fusion of Five Elements. He

plans to integrate the Taoist yoga into his daily sadhana.

Another high level Zen meditator told Master Chia he felt alienated

from the masses of unawakened human beings and depressed

by the mechanicalness of their living only to eat, work, drink, and

sleep. Master Chia taught him how Taoists harmonize with larger

forces outside of the self.

At the very highest level Esoteric Taoist yoga has techniques to

awaken the kundalini energy to such a level that consciousness is

thrust beyond the body for the purpose of doing spiritual work in

subtle realms of consciousness. According to Master Chia, the

Taoist masters modified a crucial aspect of the kundalini yoga techniques

learned from Indian masters who travelled to China. The

Taoists detected a practical problem with the Indian method, which

unites the human mind with its higher spirit by literally ascending

out the crown chakra above the head.

If one ascended out the crown chakra prematurely, there were

grave physical and psychic dangers. But if one took too long there

was also the danger of physical death before one had completed

the process of transforming mind and body energy into spiritual

energy. The Taoist masters resolved this problem by incorporating

their knowledge of subtle anatomy of chi flow. The result is that in

Taoist esoteric yoga one does not focus energy on a single chakra,

such as the heart, third eye, or crown chakra, with the intention of

using that energy center as the gateway to higher consciousness.

It is possible to open one or several higher chakras and still have

their power undermined by physical or moral weakness in the lower

energy centers. This can block progress to the highest levels if the

practitioner denies or ignores this imbalance.

The Taoists avoided these problems by absorbing higher energy,

whether from outside sources or sexual resources and circulating it continuously through all the centers. The goal was to

build a solid and powerful energy base, self-contained within the

human form, before the final transormation of the mind (or “soul”)

into spirit was effected. They would so thoroughly master their chi

flow within the body that they could consciously circulate this chi

outside the body as preparation for a safe pathway on which this

soul could follow.

Master Chia thus describes the Taoist approach to kundalini

awakening as the body and mind “parenting” the rebirth of its own

soul into the next dimension of consciousness. One does not expect

a human infant to fend for itself immediately after birth; that is

the parent’s responsibility. The reborn soul, ascending out the crown

chakra and arriving as an infant in a confusing new world, would

have “adult” guidance in the form of a powerful field of balanced chi

energy protecting it from malevolent astral forces.

Because the full transformation of all physical and mental chi

into spiritual chi energy normally takes many years, there is a danger

of premature physical death before the process is finished.

This danger becomes more acute with practices that accelerate

the inrush of kundalini energy, as the body and glands must adjust

to radical changes in metabolism. The Taoist masters circumvented

this by mastering the act of physical longevity, chronicled widely in

Taoist literature as the quest for physical immortality. The collective

genius of the Taoist masters evolved an esoteric spiritual system

designed to simultaneously awaken the kundalini and function

as a healing system applicable to the whole gamut of daily stresses

and illnesses.

The attraction of the Taoist yoga system is that it is as safe and

methodical as climbing a ladder. You climb only as high as you can

safely maintain balance and still keep the ladder rooted. The Taoist

masters emphasized staying in harmonious balance on each step

was more important than getting to the top of the ladder; trying to

jump ahead increased the risk of falling. The goal was not to leap

into some transcendent pie-in-the-sky, but to arrive with the graceful

surefootedness of a Tai Chi dancer.

Awakening of the kundalini energy does produce a transcendent

state of consciousness, but with Taoist Esoteric methods it is

only achieved when the ever changing and opposing forces of yin

and yang are first identified and then continuously, even automatically,

brought into harmonious balance by the individual. It is a process available to anyone anywhere with a functioning mind, whether

he/she is rich or poor, a cripple or an athlete, a housewife or an

executive, a criminal in prison, or a sailor alone at sea.

This internal feeling of expanding harmony is the highest freedom

available to human beings, but unfortunately is rarely sought

for lack of vision or discipline. Taoist Esoteric Yoga is an ancient

system that has proven its worth over many thousands of years in

aiding seekers to awaken awareness of that highest harmony.