THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN
FLOWER
A Kundalini Meditation Method
JJ SEMPLE
Copyright © 2019, JJ Semple. All rights reserved.
This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in
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A Life Force Books Publication
Disclaimer: The information in this book is for educational purposes only and is not
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accountable for any use or misuse of the information contained in this book. The author,
the publisher, and/or the distributors of this book are not responsible for any effects or
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hereafter.
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“The great One is the term given to that which has nothing above it.
The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to
attain non-action. One must not wish to leap over everything and
penetrate directly. The maxim handed down to us is to take in hand
the work on human nature. In doing this it is important not to take
any wrong path.”
— THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER WILHELM EDITION
C ON T E N T S
Part I
1. Wilhelm or Cleary
Part II
2. Organization of this Interpretive Guidebook
3. A Case Study on Using This Meditation
4. Terminology
Part III
5. I - Heavenly Consciousness (The Heart)
6. II - The Primal Spirit and The Conscious Spirit
7. III - Circulation of the Light and Protection of the Center
8. IV - Circulation of the Light and Making the Breathing Rhythmical
9. V - Mistakes During the Circulation of the Light
10. VI – Confirmatory Experiences During the Circulation of the Light
11. VII – The Living Manner of the Circulation of the Light
12. VIII – A Magic Spell For the Far Journey
Part IV
13.
14.
15.
16.
Kundalini Meditation Modernized for Primetime
Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing (DDB)
Control of Heart Rate
The Backward-Flowing Method
Part V
17. The Microcosmic Orbit
Other Life Force Books Titles
Notes
About the Author
I
T h e S e c re t o f t h e G old e n F lowe r a nd Ku nd a l i n i
“The statements of this kind that during the process the shukra
(semen) dries up or becomes thin, that the male organ shrinks, or
that the sexual appetite is lost, contained in old manuals, cannot fail
to convey important bits of information to the modern savants
engaged in the investigation. An ancient Chinese work, The Secret
of the Golden Flower, contains unmistakable hints about this
process, which no one with some knowledge of the subject can fail
to notice, and yet Jung, in his commentary on the book, entirely
preoccupied with his own theories about the unconscious, despite
the unambiguous nature of the statements in the work, finds in it
only material for the corroboration of his own ideas and nothing
beyond that. The same thing happened in a seminar held by him on
Kundalini of which a written summary is still available in the Jung
Institute. Not one of the savants present, as is evident from the
views expressed by them, displayed the least knowledge about the
real significance of this hoary cult and the tremendous import of the
ancient doctrine they were discussing at the time.” 1
— THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF RELIGION AND
GENIUS - GOPI KRISHNA
1
WILHELM OR CLEARY
T
he Secret of the Golden Flower has two objectives. One, it’s a
manual for kundalini meditation, even though the term
“kundalini” never appears in the text. Put aside what you may
have been told or read about this book and accept this fact. If you believe
it’s something other, you were probably misinformed by someone who has
never practiced the method. Two, it’s an explanation of ontology, which the
dictionary defines as: the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of
being. Neither objective is readily understood without practicing the
method. Sure, it’s possible to approach the text as an academic challenge,
but the best way to reconcile the two objectives is by practicing the method,
which, if you are patient, allows you to “grok” the ontological elements as
you move forward. The two are not separated in the text; they’re mingled
together, which, as you might imagine, makes understanding more
problematic.
Although the method is not plentiful in detail — it takes a minimalist
approach — it is a manual for activating kundalini and I used it as such, not
that I encountered the term “kundalini” during my practice of the method. I
didn’t. I did discover that too much detail can overwhelm a practitioner, and
that’s why I stuck with it. I liked its emphasis on correct breathing. I figured
that if I learned to regulate the breathing using the pointers in the text, I’d
have fewer “moving parts” to deal with. Many methods burden the learner
with volumes of anatomical descriptions and variations on techniques. Yes,
the book is written in an esoteric manner, but I found that I began to
understand its teachings as I practiced. What else can a student ask for?
Of the two most prominent translations, I used the Wilhelm translation,
often scorned nowadays for the quality of its translation by the translator of
the other version, Thomas Cleary. Why did I use the Wilhelm version? For
the simple reason that Cleary’s version was published in 1991 and I started
my practice with the Wilhelm version (first published in 1931) in 1971, 20
years before the Cleary version appeared.
Yes, I used the Wilhelm — warts and all, according to Cleary — to
activate kundalini in a safe, permanent manner. Could I have used the
Cleary and achieved the same results? Probably. And that’s why bickering
over that translation is so pointless: either text allows the serious
practitioner to activate kundalini. But then again, neither Cleary, Wilhelm,
nor Jung ever activated kundalini. And that where this book comes in — to
clarify the teachings for those wanting to use either text for its primary
purpose — awakening kundalini.
Cleary offers a useful appraisal of each version’s approach to
organization of the text in Chapter IX of his Translation Notes, in which he
also mentions the fact that while he translated all 13 chapters of the text,
Wilhelm only translated eight:
“This and the following three sections, comprising the rest of the
text as it is found in the canonical version on which the present
version is based, are entirely omitted by Wilhelm in his rendition,
because he considers them of ‘inferior quality.’ He does not,
however, explain the basis of this evaluation. While it is true that
these last four chapters go back to basics again and again, this is in
fact a general characteristic of the whole text, which repeatedly
reviews fundamental theory and praxis as it develops the details of
their experimental implications. It may be that the difficulty of these
sections, which contain a relatively high concentration of Buddhist
and Taoist technical terms, discouraged Wilhelm from translating
them.” 1
Aside from his last comment as to Wilhelm’s motives, about which the
truth can no longer be established, Cleary’s statement is insightful: theory
and praxis are scattered and tangled throughout. As to the benefit derived
from these ontological contents, unless the reader has successfully practiced
the method and awakened kundalini or has an understanding of science,
philosophy, and mysticism, these theoretical teachings are difficult to
apprehend — because they depend on praxis. I don’t understand all of them,
only the ones that became intelligible during my 40 plus years of practicing
the actual energy cultivation techniques in the text. But, then again, I didn’t
need to because my goal was awakening kundalini.
Because this present work is based on my kundalini practice with the
Wilhelm version, I decided I cannot become entangled in the excesses of
Buddhist and Taoist terminology noted by Cleary: This book covers
Chapters 1-8 of the Wilhelm version — the only version I have first-hand
practical knowledge of. Then again, even Cleary concedes that Chapters 913 favor Buddhist and Taoist technical doctrines and references.
Before getting into the method, however, let’s go over a wee bit of
ontology, starting with two terms found throughout the book: Primal Spirit
and Conscious Spirit. According to the The Secret of the Golden Flower
(SGF), the Primal Spirit is the formative energy responsible for our physical
embodiment; the Conscious Spirit is the ego and its agents, the senses. The
senses feed us an endless flow of information. Society (our parents,
teachers, friends, family, and the media) tells us what this information
means, and our perceptions — what we perceive with our senses —
becomes reality. What we are taught to believe in and hold as values
determines our opinions and beliefs. We think we are free, but we are slaves
to the cultural, familial, and educational patterns bequeathed to us. Living
under the various illusions we are conditioned to, it is very difficult to
extract (de-condition) ourselves without recourse to the primordial, superconscious Primal Spirit.
"After the process of creation of the body is complete, Kundalini
Shakti is said to go into a dormant state. But it can become active
again later in life as the spiritual process known as a Kundalini
awakening. But rather than creating a new life form from a fertilized
ovum, it now undertakes a process of renovation of the existing
human body, particularly the brain and nervous system, so that a
more advanced faculty of mind — cosmic consciousness or
enlightenment — can be manifested." 2
When I first read the SGF over 40 years ago, I did not understand this,
nor did I know where to begin with the meditation. Did I tell myself it was
hopeless, that I might as well give up? I decided to sit and work on my
breathing — an approach I later learned originated with the Buddha, i.e.,
“to sit in one place until something happened.”
Although the ontological portions obscured the practical aspects to
some degree, I decided to forge ahead. Ultimately, once the meditation took
its course, once the light started to circulate, I was catapulted out of the
limiting duality of the physical world into the metaphysical actuality of “the
great One...which has nothing above it.”
As my practice moved forward, the ontological portions took on
meaning. To my amazement, my kundalini became aroused and ultimately
active, which surprised me greatly because I’d never heard of kundalini. As
already stated, the word isn’t mentioned in the SGF. Surprised and
distressed to find my being in a state I had no name for, I quickly realized it
wasn’t something I could talk about with so-called normal people, much
less to members of the medical profession. This was in 1971; there wasn’t a
lot of information about changes in states of being, at least none I was able
to find. I knew what had happened. I kept a journal of my practice; I could
recite the transformations taking place. I was being transformed by the oft
alluded to “Primal Spirit,” which I had awakened, and whose purpose I
finally understood.
I knew I would write about my experiences someday, 3 but at the time I
was too busy watching it revitalize my being and wondering what it would
do next. Besides, in the little I did let out to others, no one believed me.
“It’s all in your mind,” they’d say. I knew this to be untrue, but I had no
way of proving it. After all, kundalini activity is invisible. Although the
effects do make gradual physical and metabolic, as well as cognitive and
emotional changes, they are beyond the ken of science at this time.
“The relationship of the individual consciousness to the Universal
might be described as follows: In the same way that a drop of water
from an ocean is of exactly the same chemical constitution as the
ocean, but is not the ocean, our limited human consciousness is of
the same essence as the Infinite Consciousness, but is only a tiny
drop of that Infinite Consciousness that has been made to perceive
itself as finite.
“The term maya is often used in the sense of a veil that makes an
illusory world seem real to the observer. It is, rather, the power of
Shakti wrapped around the spark of consciousness in us that makes
it perceive itself as separate from the ocean of Infinite
Consciousness. As an ancient, well-known Sanskrit mantra states in
this regard, referring to the term poorna, which means wholeness or
completeness.” 4
How did I finally find a name for my condition? A friend told me about
the Samuel Weiser Book Store in New York City so I flew from Paris to
New York to continue my search. To add to the serendipitous nature of my
quest, five minutes after entering the store I found myself staring at the
spine of a book entitled Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man 5 by
Gopi Krishna. How I gravitated to this one title in such a immense,
cavernous store, I don’t know, but after perusing the book for two minutes, I
realized I’d found a label for my condition. That Weiser’s closed down in
1991 says more about the turmoil in publishing and book retailing than it
does about interest in spiritual topics. But that’s another story.
In the meantime, kundalini has become an all-encompassing term, too
big for one language or tradition alone. Let’s forget terminology conflicts
for a moment and define Kundalini as a two-step biological process that:
Awakens dormant energy through sexual sublimation,
Releases super-conscious energy throughout the body, once the
sublimated sexual energy rises to the brain.
However, while kundalini is a biological process, it is also a
rebirth/maturation process, which many seekers tend to ignore until faced
with the prospects of living the rest of their lives with this awakened energy.
How does the rebirth process work? Firstly, you must accept kundalini
energy and not struggle against it. Unfortunately, many have trouble with
acceptance — to their ultimate chagrin. But let’s say an individual accepts
this energy, what’s next? Kundalini doesn’t only re-engineer your body; it
reconditions your metabolism, emotions, and intellect. It may even affect
your genetic profile, although this cannot be proven at this time. Talk about
seeing things differently, growing up quickly. Overtime, Kundalini removes
conditioning, steers you towards selflessness and has you doing things you
never thought possible, not because you suddenly thought them up, but
because you are being driven to do them. You become an instrument, not in
a mindless or robotic way, but an instrument of self-illumination. You are
an eddy in the pool of super-consciousness, a part of the evolutionary
master plan. Your rational powers and artistic talents are enhanced; you are
able to solve problems and make better decisions. You learn not to choose
or support unnatural causes or processes.
Are The SGF’s teachings still valid in the 21st. Century? Today’s seeker
is impatient, keen on results. The SGF advises us not to try to “leap over
everything and penetrate directly.” Patience is required.
If you’re frustrated, you’ll find yourself asking: Why bother? What good
will come from struggling through this text so laden with obscure
metaphors? Good questions. Now let me ask you a question: why did you
purchase or borrow this book? Perhaps because you feel something is
missing in your life and you’ve started trying to fill it? That’s why most
people pick up this book, or others like it. Something inside yearns to be
understood; an itch has to be scratched. Where did it come from? Was it a
sudden desire to make the acquaintance of an ancient Chinese literary text,
an impulse for scholarly reading? Not likely. A book about another book
can be quite boring if it’s not accompanied by a purpose.
“Many people start their journey towards God, truth, samadhi,
because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere. Maybe through
drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or
sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit
on the head and he has a glimpse. I’m not saying make a method of
that! But I know this has happened. A certain centre in the head is
hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light.
Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it.
This is possible. The probable is no longer probable, it has become
possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest
now.”
— OSHO
That’s right, choosing this book was a purposeful act, part of an
enduring self-study process, a pervading sense that life has been less
fulfilling than it ought to be. Try as you might you can’t sustain your
enthusiasm, not for things you do, the jobs you’ve had, the people in your
life, or the fun you think you should be having. Maybe you’ve always
known there was another side of you, hiding just out of sight. Maybe
you’ve tried talking to that side of yourself secretly from time to time,
asking yourself questions about the purpose of life.
If this is why you’re reading this book, you’re on the right track.
However, if you’re reading it as a scholarly tract, then honestly, you’re
missing the point. Yes, scholarship is involved; deciphering its meaning has
to be part of the purpose. However, the real value of this book is the system
of meditation at its core. Although this book explains the meaning of the
SGF’s ontological teachings section-by-section, its primary purpose is to
transform the SGF’s opaque text into a usable, prime-time meditation
method for the modern practitioner. The SGF is a manual, like the one for
your Blu-Ray, GoPro, camera, or any other household or recreational device
or gadget. The dials and buttons don’t pop up like they do when you touch
the screen of your smart phone, but they are there, just the same. All you
have to do to make them appear is practice the method.
Yes, the terminology and poetic license in the SGF are stumbling blocks
for many readers. Some may object because my commentary is based on
my kundalini experiences and not on the terminology in the Indian, Tibetan,
and Chinese traditions you are familiar with.
That’s where this book — the one you’re holding — comes in. While
the SGF contains a viable meditation practice, if you don’t understand the
text, you won’t make progress. That’s where my experience comes in. I’ve
worked with the SGF for over 40 years, since 1971. At first, I didn’t
understand very much, but in using the book as a guide for my meditation
practice, I learned by doing. Doing, and more doing. Until every word and
phrase gradually took on a meaning related to my practice.
For example, you’ll experience actual physical feedback as your
practice progresses: chakra activity, the appearance of markings on the
surface of your skin, vibrational states, involuntary movements, sundry
energy shifts, sensations, events, and buildups as you progress. When these
occur, the SGF won’t explain what’s happening; that’s not the way it’s
constructed. Once again, that’s where this book comes in. You’ll be able to
confirm various effects and sensations with the explanations and examples
in this book.
You wouldn’t be the first person to read or skim through The Secret of
the Golden Flower, then toss it aside with a, “Hmm, nice, but I don’t really
get it. I thought there’d be more to it.” So maybe you pick up this book for
research or educational purposes in order to gain some literal insight into
the meaning of the SGF. If it’s only a line-by-line transliteration you’re
seeking, then you’d be missing its purpose, which is to transform your
entire Being.
On the other hand, if you can’t accept everything I tell you, challenge
me. Challenge yourself. Use logic in presenting your ideas and watch how
your mind reacts when people don’t agree with you. Could what I’m trying
to convey to you be true? Is there more to your being than medical science
admits? Are You a Being with a capital “B”?
Don’t pick up this book asking, What is this Golden Flower? Find out
for yourself! The words of this book won’t jump off the page until you
practice. Only then will you begin to understand its meaning.
And don’t be cynical about your practice, be enthusiastic. If you find a
better way of applying a certain technique, let me know.
And don’t rely on so-called experts: writers, editors, translators, or other
pundits, for, as Gopi Krishna’s stated in this chapter’s citation, none of them
ever practiced the method or knew anything about the sexual sublimation
process so central to the purpose, meaning, and praxis in this book. Neither
Jung, Wilhelm, nor Cleary.
In fact, in a later chapter ponderously entitled, “Questions and Answers
Opening up the Mysteries of the Doctrine of the Golden Flower,” Cleary
states:
“The true practice of the great Way first requires that the vitality be
transformed into energy. As alchemical literature has clearly
explained, this vitality is not sexual.” 6
If statements like this by so-called experts such as Cleary leave you
wondering, “Why should I believe Semple when an expert like Cleary says
it isn’t so? How does he know?” Two reasons:
The dual purposes of sexual energy have been known for
centuries. 7 What are its two purposes? Reproduction and SelfRealization. If sexual energy isn’t used in the Self-Realization
process (awakening kundalini), what other sources does the
body have? Shake off any preconceptions that control of the
mind is the goal of this method: the goal and purpose is
awakening kundalini, awakening the Primal Spirit, and this is
accomplished by the only viable source of energy in the human
body — sexual energy.
I practiced the method; they didn’t. It allowed me to raise
kundalini, the evolutionary energy I’ve lived with and whose
doings I watched for over 40 years.
Keeping an open mind about the SGF’s teachings is essential. But
having an open mind is difficult. Why? Belief systems hate open minds,
because an open mind means verifying everything you see, hear and feel,
questioning conventional wisdom and preconceptions, and examining the
opinions that control your thinking and your habits. Which actually puts
you at odds with the rest of the world, a situation most people aren’t ready
to face because they’re used to going with the flow. Keeping an open mind
means becoming a maverick, free to question accepted wisdom about your
own self and about life. A maverick “lives off the land” in a strange new
landscape. When a maverick questions things, he doesn’t turn away, he
keeps looking, eventually finding meditation, and the truth that comes with
meditating.
So maybe you say to yourself...Open Mind, I have an open mind. It’s
my fool cousin — fill in the blank: neighbor, supervisor, coworker, family
member who won’t listen. Excuses, rationalizations, denials.
Having an open mind isn’t only about not generalizing or not being
judgmental. Nor is it only about listening to others or accepting new ideas,
it’s about the emotional effect that perceived slights and resentments have
on you, it’s about emotional control. One of the beneficial effects of
meditation is recognizing when something upsets you. Meditation stops you
from overreacting, helps you remain neutral. It has a soothing health effect.
The Secret of the Golden Flower is a manual for energy cultivation. As
such, it’s crucial that you accept Jung’s relationship to the text as that of a
dabbler. We’ll review this in detail after the we finish going over the text.
For now, let’s just say that Jung was trying to connect the dots between East
and West. The thesis he came up with was that Eastern (Indian, Chinese,
and Tibetan) spiritual traditions somehow equated to Western psychology.
In fact, there are very few similarities. That didn’t stop Jung from trying to
sell readers on some of his pet theories that Animus, for one, is the
equivalent of Yang and Anima equals Yin. Trouble is, he largely succeeded.
What his efforts really accomplished, however, was to shift people’s
perception of the energy cultivation teachings in The Secret of the Golden
Flower away from its energetic aspects towards teachings that are more
acceptable in the West, namely psychoanalysis.
Alas, Jung’s undermining of a whole tradition not only subverted its
original meaning and purpose, he papered it over with inapt, second-hand
analogies, in the end doing a disservice to the Taoist and Buddhist
traditions.
“To fully deal with Jung’s treatment of the golden flower teaching
would lead us afield from the point of this work, which is to expose
the original teaching itself. The purpose of mentioning Jung here is
to reopen a door of inquiry by questioning the limits of the
limitations he presumed.
“Jung’s ideas on the golden flower, and their significance in
relation to Western thinking about Eastern thought, are more
fruitfully treated in the context of his total work on Eastern subjects.
Nevertheless, they provide a useful counterpoint to the original
tradition when highlighting psychological practicalities of the
golden flower exercise.” 8
You get a glimpse of how convoluted the crosstalk on the teaching
becomes when Cleary savages Wilhelm and Jung, making their comments
that much more superfluous until you realize neither camp fully knows
what it’s talking about.
I’ve often wondered why no Chinese source or spokesman called Jung’s
commentary into question at the time of the Wilhelm edition’s first
publication. For instance, although the works of Lu K’uan Yü [Charles
Luk], writing in the 1960s and 70s, contain many references to cultivation
and use of sexual energy in Chinese meditation practices, he makes no
mention of The Secret of the Golden Flower.
Although the SGF’s poetic phrasing may appear cryptic, the method
itself is quite simple:
Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing
Control of Heart Rate
The Backward-Flowing Method
Once you realize it’s about energy cultivation, you can brush aside the
unintelligible claptrap offered by those whose only familiarity and
relationship to the text was that they understood the Chinese, German, and
English languages, i.e., they were translators or dabblers. No matter that
they never practiced the method. As Gopi Krishna remarked above, it’s not
unusual to find experts sitting around a table discussing things they know
nothing about. So, goodbye Animus and Anima, goodbye to Jung’s
psychobabble slang. Let’s get into the meat of the subject, or for
vegetarians, the Tofu of it...
MORE ABOUT THE PRIMAL SPIRIT: BIRTH AND REBIRTH
Most of us believe we understand "birth," by virtue of being born, giving
birth, witnessing a birth, or viewing, reading materials on the subject of
birth. "Rebirth" is a more problematic topic.
Almost a platitude, the term has religious as well as social and
psychological connotations. And yet, most people believe in some sort of
rebirth although they'd be hard pressed to describe how it actually works.
If a person is Christian, resurrection is a ready-made paradigm for
rebirth. But, it too, has its problems, as explained in Elizabeth Clare
Prophet's book, Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity. 9
"The New Testament presents conflicting views of the resurrection.
It in turn reflects the variety of Jewish resurrection concepts. Some
Jews believed that only righteous Israelites would resurrect. Some
thought the resurrection would be on earth, other in paradise. Some
thought the resurrected would have physical bodies, others that their
bodies would be transformed into spiritual bodies.
"Which of these views did Jesus espouse? Or did he have a
different vision?
"The conventional Christian view of the resurrection as a single
event at the end of time derives in part from Revelation, which tells
us that the dead will 'stand before God' and be judged.
"If the resurrection is a single event at the end of time, why were
saints and martyrs raised ahead of time? And were they in physical
or spiritual bodies? Clearly, the Bible reflects several ideas about
resurrection that were current in the authors' day."
Reincarnation is as different from resurrection as Buddhism is from
Christianity. Instead of the resurrection concept of the physical body being
raised up to heaven, reincarnation proposes a transmigration of the soul into
a new body, whose conception and incarnation takes place in the womb of
new mother and is followed by physical birth.
Rebirth is neither reincarnation nor resurrection. Nor is it physical
rebirth. It is, however, a spiritual birth process that resembles physical birth
in many ways. How can this be? Very simply they resemble one another
because the same ontological agent, kundalini, "manages" both birth and
rebirth. There are differences, as we shall see later on. First, however, let's
delve deeper into the true nature of kundalini
Kundalini is the biological life force energy in your body; it functions in
two quite different states. In its creative state, it’s known as Kundalini
Shakti 10 — creative in the sense that it shapes your very substance in the
womb. After birth, it works in the background as Prana Shakti, the
maintenance state of kundalini. And unless it reactivates involuntarily or
you reactivate it intentionally through the practice of a reliable method
like Golden Flower Meditation (GFM), it remains in the background
throughout your life. Think of it as a racing car that’s idling; the motor’s
turning, but it's not going anywhere. It manages your body’s autonomic
functions: cell division, breathing, blood flow, digestion — without you’re
being aware of it or appreciating it. Like a computer routine that works in
the background, it’s there. If it stopped working altogether, you’d be dead.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, kundalini is never dormant, never
completely inactive. It’s either in a maintenance state (Prana Shakti) or a
creative state (Kundalini Shakti) during your lifetime:
During gestation, it's Kundalini Shakti, the creative force,
responsible for your incarnation,
During so-called “normal" life, it's Prana Shakti, maintaining
your autonomic functions, until,
Upon reactivating, it takes over once again as Kundalini Shakti,
the super-conscious creative life force.
Most people don’t realize that kundalini resides within them in one state
or the other. They are simply unaware of its actuality and its potential.
Which means, of course, that they may never “re-activate” it either
spontaneously or otherwise, not unless they learn how to induce a
Kundalini awakening through meditation practice. Even then, the outcome
is never certain. There's a quantum or karmic aspect to the process.
At birth, Kundalini sort of hibernates. Why? Because the wonders of the
material world ignite our senses and we start to process and explore its
delights. We let the thrall of the material world take over our thoughts and
emotions. We become Ego driven, seeking mastery over all. Only the
spiritually motivated become curious about the metaphysical aspects of
Creation. Only a few seek to discover their hibernating birthright —
Kundalini Shakti. And it’s a shame, because...
We are all perfect at the split-second moment before conception, a
magic, quantum moment when consciousness becomes flesh, a process the
Bible expresses thusly: And the Word became flesh. Of course at that
moment, like a building before the foundation is laid, our beings are only
blueprints, i.e., the Word. These blueprints — the numinous plans for our
incarnation — are perfect. At the moment of conception — the moment the
egg is fertilized by the sperm — the body begins to take shape, i.e.,
becomes flesh.
It’s the moment when, were you able to stand over your perfectly drawn
blueprint, you'd wonder if it will be executed faithfully. That’s the job of
Kundalini Shakti, the creative agent responsible for not only providing the
raw energy for your incarnation — not a simple task when you think about
it — but also for creating the blueprint, the master plan for your
embodiment and your ultimate Being.
Until the moment of birth, Kundalini Shakti controls your growth. The
moment you are born, you become "materialistically" conscious and
kundalini — your natural life force — hibernates. Heredity, environment,
and those aspects unique to your DNA take over the direction of your life
and the formation of your physical body while in the background, Prana
Shakti 11 manages your body’s day-to-day, minute-by-minute maintenance
functions.
Nevertheless, even though Prana Shakti toils away in the background,
Kundalini Shakti waits for you to activate it. A popular explanation, really a
misconception, says that if kundalini is not awakened, it is dormant,
completely inactive. If that were true, we’d have stopped evolving.
Kundalini's maintenance state, Prana Shakti, is always functioning. It’s
actively at work on you now, maintaining your autonomic functions.
Once reawakened in a later life, Kundalini Shakti starts to effect
changes to your nervous system, somatic structure, your metabolism, your
genetic profile, and sometimes to your anatomy. It doesn’t stop there. Some
changes occur gradually — deep psychological, cognitive, emotional
changes, for example, take years to assimilate. Abilities and talents surface
on their own; suddenly you’re speaking a foreign language, playing an
instrument, or manipulating large numbers in your head.
So how do birth and rebirth vary? Gestation takes place in the protected
environment of the mother's womb. Barring harmful influences — medical,
organic, environmental, or other — affecting the mother's well-being, the
baby is born as perfect as possible.
In the case of a Kundalini Shakti rebirth, the process takes place in the
open air instead of surrounded by the amniotic fluid in the uterus. What a
difference! The perfect environment of the amniotic fluid as opposed to the
New York Subway or some aleatory location. Which is safer and more
conducive to growth? A leave-taking from your mother's womb or your
exposure to elements you suddenly realize are toxic?
And that's why when Kundalini Shakti rises in the mature individual, he
or she becomes sensitive to loud noise, bright light, noxious smells, etc. —
just as a baby might. Blast loud music, bright lights, foul smells into a
nursery and any baby immediately starts to cry. What's more, the nine
months of gestation that a baby experiences are transmogrified into many
years of adjustment for the fully-grown kundalini initiate.
It's important for anyone contemplating kundalini to know this. Most
don't. It's no wonder many complain of sensory overload.
There's one other important similarity between the two, whether:
1. The formation of the being — embryo to fetus, to fully formed
infant — takes place in a controlled environment, or,
2. In the second instance, after many years of life.
In both cases, Kundalini Shakti uses the original blueprint for your
perfect being to conform your flesh and blood to said blueprint.
In the case of a baby immersed in amniotic fluid this is no great
challenge; the fetus' physical constituents are as malleable as the mature
individual's are rigid and resistant to modification.
Nevertheless, when Kundalini Shakti rises in later life, it starts
conveying life force energy to parts of the mature body that do not conform
to the blueprint. The conforming process can cause discomfort and, in some
cases, pain. One more reason to explore the consequences of activating
kundalini and doing thorough diligence before you begin to arouse it.
II
I nt ro d u c t io n To T h e Te x t
“Not Westward, but Eastward seek the coming of the light.”
— DAKOTA INDIAN SAYING
2
ORGANIZATION OF THIS IN TERPRETIVE
GUIDEBOOK
B
efore diving into the text, I’d like to set some basic expectations
and ground rules:
1. This book attempts to clarify, not only the teachings, but also the
purpose of the Wilhelm edition of The Secret of the Golden
Flower, using references to the Cleary edition where pertinent.
2. I have no knowledge of Chinese. Nor am I a Buddhist or a Taoist
— although I respect both. On the other hand, thanks to my
practice and study over the last 40 years of the Golden Flower
Meditation (GFM) system as presented in the Wilhelm edition, I
have first-hand, empirical understanding of its true teachings and
significance and I use my experience to arbitrate oversights or
misinterpretations, measuring when and where Wilhelm’s
deviates from what I know to be the actual functioning of the
method, knowledge I’ve obtained from practicing it. I compare
the words of the Wilhelm not to the original Chinese, but to my
successful deciphering and practice of the method. In other
words, I use an empirical standard — my experience — in
contrast to those who have translated the words and written
about the method, but never practiced it.
3. For a narrative of my experience from my first flirtations with
spirituality to my discovery and practice of the GFM method —
the karmic pitfalls and challenges I faced — I recommend
Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time. It’s a case
study that illustrates the oft repeated phrase that the journey is as
important as the destination.
4. Certain terms in the text, and some that are not, are crucial to its
understanding; I list and define them hereunder. However,
despite my intention to clarify these terms, they may remain
obscure because understanding spiritual and metaphysical
teachings requires a level of empirical confirmation, i.e., if you
don’t live it, you may be unable to understand it.
As stated above, the text and my commentary are organized as in the
following example:
CHAPTER IV - PART 2 (CLEARY 5)
Wilhelm
So, then, should a man have no imagining in his mind? One cannot be
without imaginings. Should one not breathe? One cannot do without
breathing. The best way is to make a medicine of the illness. Since heart
and breath are mutually dependent, the circulation of the light must be
united with the rhythm of breathing.
Author’s Commentary
This points to the importance of diaphragmatic deep breathing, which,
when correctly done, leads to the ability of detecting energy arousals in the
body. This passage doesn’t address the breathing method directly; it uses
metaphorical language to alert the reader to the fact that breathing is the key
to arousing kundalini and circulating the light.
Because Cleary uses the same numbers for each paragraph of the text as
well as for his commentary later on in the book, I use his numbers to
identify the equivalent sections of the Wilhelm text. Mostly one-to-one
matches, sometimes one author does take to flights of fancy or commentary
that causes sections to lose their one-to-one equivalence. When this occurs,
I explain what’s happening.
I also do not address the various small print notes throughout the
Wilhelm text. Some are marked CFB for Cary Baynes, who translated the
German to English, others HW for Hellmut Wilhelm, Richard Wilhelm’s
son, who contributed to later editions after his father’s death. Still others are
not initialed at all. I some case they clarify the text and I refer to them.
3
A CASE STUDY ON USING THIS MEDITATION
D
eciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time is a
companion guide/sequel case study to the book you’re reading, a
recitation of my single-minded pursuit of purpose — how I
discovered GFM and applied its teachings to my life. The stumbles,
gambles, discoveries, and mistakes I made along the way. It’s about pushing
metaphysical dials and buttons, and setting aside meaning until the purpose
was accomplished:
Young man feels the urge to explore inner reality, young man leaves
the family cocoon, sets family responsibilities and work aside, looks
for teacher, rejects teacher, finds another, and another, finally goes
out on his own, declares he’ll remain in one place until something
happens. In short, a young man with a purpose so fixated it obscures
everything else.
But that’s not this book; the book you are reading is all about purpose.
Some readers want a book whose sole purpose is its meaning; others want a
book whose meaning is its purpose. It’s a matter of personality, intellect,
and physical type. People learn in different ways. Some like to read the user
guide before playing with the dials and buttons; others can’t wait to get
their hands on the buttons and dials. Theory (meaning); praxis (purpose). I
like them in equal doses, but I will always start with purpose.
To consult the most up-to-date version of GFM while working with this
guide, visit the Golden Flower Meditation website. Because practitioners
around the world enrich the method by submitting new material related to
their practice, I keep it on a web page because it’s easier to update than a
book.
4
TERMINOLOGY
T
erminology is the curse of metaphysical teachings. This is
especially true of The Secret of the Golden Flower. There are
many synonyms, substitute expressions for terms in the book, not
to mention much poetic license with the way terms are used.
Trying to sort them out is akin to trying to describe the top of a
mountain without ever seeing one. You can waste a lot of energy wondering
what the top of the mountain looks like, what it feels like to be there. Better
to spend the energy getting there. After all, you can’t understand a process
before you’ve tested it yourself...before you’ve been there, done that. The
Secret of the Golden Flower describes a process that requires observation of
a special sort — the ability to detect and verify energy sensations and
arousals in various parts of the body. It’s an ability that goes hand-in-hand
with practice.
Metaphorically speaking, the climb takes time. Once you are there — at
the figurative mountaintop — you can apply the same observational,
scientific principles to your metaphysical experiences as a scientist applies
to a laboratory experiment. You can even add a dash of poetic expression,
elaborate on its mystical aspects, that is, if you’d been one of the writers of
the original text who came up with sentences like the following: “In the
purple hall of the city of jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and
Life.” 1 Do these kinds of pronouncements leave you cold? Never fear; we’ll
be going through the text section by section. There’s a lot of duplication and
I’ll point that out, too. Sometimes it’s so dense it’s better to skip over it
because it’s not applicable to the central teachings.
In the quest for self-realization, labels separate us because we absorb
the doctrines and dogmas of the belief system that most influenced us. We
do not realize that we need to examine everything we see, hear, or feel.
Labels also make us suspicious of one another.
The new-age spiritual marketplace can’t keep up with itself. A new
teaching appears; the author tweaks the labels; adds a few new terms of his
own, et voilà, a new sensation is born. Three weeks to enlightenment! New
and improved! Tell your friends!
“Readers will also find themselves faced with differences in the way
various teachers language their teachings and discrepancies in the
way that each approaches this subject. In some cases, it is simply a
matter of terminology (e.g., one teacher uses ‘enlightenment,’
another ‘liberation’; one talks about the ‘self’ being the ultimate,
while another talks about the ‘self’ as the ego).” 2
There are many teachings out there. It’s hard to keep score in this newagey environment. The only thing that matters are the teachings that work,
the teachings that don’t work, and the teachings that work for one
individual, but not for another, and so on…
“From the point of view of that central experience, it makes no more
difference if one calls the golden flower awakening a relationship to
God or to the Way, or whether one calls it the holy spirit or the
Buddha nature or the real self. The Tao Te Ching says, ‘Names can
be designated, but they are not fixed terms.’” 3
That’s why I use simple English, keeping the jargon at a minimum.
Where available, I include the Cleary term, as well. The terms are as
follows:
TERM ONE
The “backward-flowing method” (Wilhelm), “method of reversal” (Cleary).
Stripped to basics, the GFM method has three steps:
Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing
Control of Heart Rate
The Backward-Flowing Method
The backward-flowing method is difficult to understand because it’s not
about theory or mental effort. It’s an internal physical process that leads to a
metaphysical result (see Term Two below).
Each step in the method is dependent on the previous one and because
the backward-flowing method is the final step in the method, you must
master the first two steps before even attempting it. The term backwardflowing method is featured throughout the text. The first two steps
“diaphragmatic deep breathing” and “control of heart rate” are not
mentioned in the text. That’s because the SGF uses a variety of terms and
why I boiled them down into everyday English for modern practitioners.
Nevertheless, correct breathing and control of heart rate are essential to the
method.
So what is the “backward-flowing method?” It’s described in depth and
illustrated on this Common Sense Kundalini webpage. In brief, the term is
used to describe the process of changing the direction of distilled sexual
energy that builds up in the lower extremities as a result of practicing GFM.
Once detected, the practitioner is able to reverse the direction of this energy,
drawing it up the spine into the brain, which is only possible once that
energy is “cultivated” as a direct result of mastering Steps One and Two.
I prefer the Wilhelm version of the term, although as we will see while
examining the text, both terms suffice.
TERM TWO
Right here, I’m going to include a term that isn’t mentioned in either
edition, and yet is crucial to whole meaning and purpose of the text. And
that term is “Kundalini.” Again, you won’t find it in either edition, but there
are, in both editions, no small number of equivalents: circulation of the
light, the epoch of fire (Wilhelm); turning around the light, the firing
process (Cleary). There are other terms that seem to point to the same
meaning. I realize this sounds vague. To clarify, I will deal with each
instance as we get into the text.
Are any, or all, of the terms offered above interchangeable with
kundalini? I like to think of kundalini as the catalyst for the turning the
light. Once sublimated (redirected), distilled sexual energy starts the
climbing the spine, the light starts to turn. It’s all part of the process:
sublimating the energy distills it into an elixir the brain can accept, then
draws it up the spine into the brain, which starts the light turning — all part
of the kundalini process.
TERM THREE
“Action to attain non-action” (Wilhelm), “effort to arrive at effortlessness”
(Cleary). For this key term, I prefer the Cleary version: “effort to arrive at
effortlessness.”
The following chart illustrates the meaning of this phrase better than
any long-winded verbal definition I might attempt:
N OTICE ON THE LEFT SIDE OF THE DIAGRAM THERE ARE TWO PHASES : THE
You do it! phase and the It does you! phase. You do it! refers to the effort
portion of the Cleary phrase (action in The Wilhelm edition) while the It
does you! portion refers to effortlessness portion (non-action in The
Wilhelm edition). This may seem like you’re chasing your tail in a circular
bit of nonsense. Not so. Practicing the meditation is not the only effort
involved. You cannot discount the effort you put into searching for a
method, discovering the one that suits you, understanding the method as
your practice progresses, and ultimately awakening the Kundalini-Life
Force mechanism. In many cases, the You do it phase consumes more time
and effort, and it can certainly be more frustrating in terms of effort than the
actual time devoted to the arousal of kundalini energy. There’s also the
post-release phase only hinted at in the diagram, and that is the learning to
live with an active kundalini, something I’ve been doing for the last 40-plus
years.
So don’t sell the effort short; there’s a lot of preliminary work involved.
Once you activate Kundalini, start the light circulating (Wilhelm), or
turning the light around (Cleary), you no longer have to do it: It does you.
It’s hard for readers to grasp this part of the process, that an autonomic
function can take over and start regulating bodily processes. Suffice it to
say that I meditated for many years. Once kundalini was aroused, however,
I no longer had to meditate as the kundalini energy is always present in my
body, doing its reconstructive work in the background, 24-7, as I go about
my daily life. Does this mean that I no longer have to make any effort, that
kundalini takes care of everything?
Not in the least, self-realization is never complete; constant effort of
various sorts is required. 4 Don’t try to outguess the process; it will make
itself clear to you at the proper moment.
TERM FOUR
Wilhelm uses the terms Primal Spirit and Conscious Spirit to denote
Cleary’s choice of Original Spirit and Conscious Spirit. They are both apt
and important to the understanding of the text, and I have written many
blog posts on their meaning, one of which I refer you to here, a portion of
which I cite below:
“I didn’t understand the concept of the Primal Spirit as a component
part of human ontology, even after reading The Secret of the Golden
Flower (SGF) that makes the distinction between it (the Primal
Spirit) and its polar opposite (the Conscious Spirit). According to
the SGF, the Primal Spirit is the formative energy responsible,
among other things, for our embodiment. It is eternal. When the
Conscious Spirit activates at birth, it starts recording and processing
the endless flow of information taken in by the senses. And from
this information it constructs our ego.
“As babies we perceive the world around us and begin to
formulate judgments and hypotheses about what we see, hear, and
feel. This entity offering me her breast is warm and smells good and
the milk it provides tastes good. Later on as we refine our ability to
process information, we learn to abstract events and situations: this
entity (which I now identify as my mother) loves me, or, heaven
forbid, if the experience is unpleasant, if my mother doesn’t provide
the comfort and protection I need, we attach negative labels: My
mother doesn’t love me. My mother hates me. And the beat goes on,
until we are fully conditioned by the world around us, and we have
forgotten the energy that created us — the Primal Spirit. The ego
wants it that way, wants us to suppress this knowledge, all part of a
defense mechanism for survival in “so-called” real world.
“At the age of 35, I raised Kundalini. Energy I didn’t know
existed started flowing through a neural subsystem in my body. I
could feel and observe it. Almost immediately, I realized that this
subsystem was controlled by the Primal Spirit, the term I’d come
across many times during my yearlong study of the SGF — without
really understanding what it meant. To me it was devoid of any
substantive meaning. But when it booted up inside me, not only did
it energize my body, it healed and restored it. And I put two plus two
together to make four, then five, then six, then infinity. Yes, the
Primal Spirit deals in oneness and the infinite.” 5
I think of Primal Spirit as Consciousness with an upper case ‘C’ — the
Energy Continuum, the life force, Cosmic Consciousness, if you will.
Primal Spirit is what our true Being has always been and known, even
though we may not yet have brought it to the fore in a given lifetime unless
we resolved to do the Work of self-realization, and have actually done it. As
it is the source of all, the Primal Spirit is intelligent. It doesn’t sweat the
little things; it may not know multiplication tables, it doesn’t memorize
phone numbers, balance a checkbook, or do crossword puzzles. It does,
however, know the human body. It regulates evolution. It does know DNA,
which it “invented” without having to read a textbook. In fact, text books
are only now scratching the surface of what the Primal Spirit “knows.”
The Conscious Spirit is the consciousness acquired through exposure of
the senses to the material world, what we learn from a lifetime on Earth —
the Ego — consciousness with a lower case ‘c’. After birth, the Primal
Spirit retires to a mostly dormant state while the Conscious Spirit takes
over. Not only does it take over, it works to suppress everything the Primal
Spirit stands for. Only by the practice of a method like GFM can the Primal
Spirit be restored to its rightful place. The bigger the ego, the further away
one is from the Primal Spirit. Now, the Conscious Spirit is not all bad. We
needed it to survive. In evolutionary terms, without the Conscious Spirit we
never would have been able to impose our will over this Earth, to get to
where we are today. Where are we? Do we still need the Ego now? Should
we not be learning to awaken the Primal Spirit from its slumber? Not only
for our own futures, but also for the future of the natural world.
“According to Tantra, the human being is a miniature universe. All
that is found in the cosmos can be found within each individual, and
the same principles that apply to the universe apply in the case of
the individual being. For human beings the body is considered the
most perfect and powerful of all yantras and is seen as a tool for
inner awareness.” 6
TERM FIVE
“Diaphragmatic deep breathing” is another phrase not specifically
mentioned in the text even though correct and mindful breathing is the
principal technique in the book. Again, I have consolidated the many
mentions that apply to breathing into one phrase. Why this wording?
Because proper use of the diaphragm is essential. The beginner needs to
think about this organ every time he/she comes across a reference to
breathing.
TERM SIX
Keep in mind that the purpose of this book is awakening kundalini in a
controlled manner. Therefore, we make the distinction between intentional
or deliberate kundalini awakenings and awakenings that are unintentional
or spontaneous, which are frequently temporary and very often take the
individual by surprise. Spontaneous cases are not addressed in the book.
Again, I refer you to an outside source.
TERM SEVEN
Although mentioned previously, I include the term sexual sublimation in
this list because it’s not only crucial to understanding the backward-flowing
method, it’s the hardest concept for a initiate to accept. Some readers hold
on to the misconception that sex is dirty and can have no possible role in
spiritual development. Quite the contrary, sex is energy and expanding
Consciousness requires energy. Members of our race manufacture sexual
energy for the purpose of reproduction. The ancients discovered that this
energy could be sublimated, redirected for spiritual purposes. This may
conflict with your beliefs or what you’ve been taught, which, if you’re
serious about this work, you’ve already begun to reject or, at the very least,
verify against your empirical findings.
TERM EIGHT
Bodies, nadis, and chakras. There are mentions of various types of spirit
bodies and other esoteric notions in the text. We’ll try to pin their contextual
meaning down where appropriate, which isn’t easy because each esoteric
system offers its own delineations, synonyms, and crossover definitions.
TERM NINE
The term “Circulation of the Light” headlines Chapter Three, Circulation of
the Light and Protection of the Center where it is first introduced. There
may be some confusion between circulation of the light and backwardflowing method, or with Cleary’s terms, turning the light around and
method of reversal. There are a lot of Taoist websites with information on
the circulation of the light. The question is: Are they one and the same?
The difference for me is the backward-flowing method is a cause. One
of its results, but not the only one, is the circulation of the light. The first
produces the second. Circulating the light is a not only a phenomenon; it’s a
helpful confirmatory sign that you’ve awakened kundalini.
III
T h e Te x t
“The deeper secrets cannot be effected without making the breathing
rhythmical.” 1
— THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER,
RICHARD WILHELM, TRANSLATOR.
Be prepared for redundancies, repetitions, and poetic license in the
Wilhelm, which in spite of these obstacles, is the edition that I worked with
during my journey. If you begin by sitting and not worrying whether you’re
doing everything correctly, things will fall into place of their own accord.
Sit a little, read a little — the two go together. I wasn’t able to understand
the entirety of the method until I started practicing it, and that, not all at
once. This holds true, not only for GFM, but for any method. Bit by bit,
however, meaning began to leap off the page for me and I felt grounded in
the method. Likewise, had I merely sat, I would have missed some of the
crucial checkpoints in the book.
5
I - H E AV E N L Y C O N S C I O U S N E S S ( T H E H E A R T )
TH E CE LE S TIA L MIN D - CLE A RY
“The secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to
attain non-action.”
T
CHAPTER I - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-2)
his is an introductory chapter, an attempt to set the scene and
introduce some of the terminology, albeit perhaps too many
substitutes for the same terms at one time.
Wilhelm
Master Lu-tsu said, That which exists through itself is called the Way
(Tao). Tao has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence [hsing], the one
primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the
light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the
two eyes. Today I will be your guide and will first reveal to you the secret
of the Golden Flower of the great One, and starting from that, I will explain
the rest in detail.
Author’s Commentary
As stated in the introduction to terms, Cleary uses Original Spirit to
designate Consciousness. In this instance he uses the same wording as
Wilhelm — Primal Spirit. No problem. It just shows how easy it is for
writers/editors/translators to lose track of how they use terminology.
As for meaning of the Tao or the Way, the text seems to be using it in a
particular manner, equating the Way with the Primal Spirit, which to my
mind is limiting. Previously, I indicated that Primal Spirit refers to
kundalini and its myriad synonyms, including Consciousness with a capital
‘C’. 1There are those who see the term as having both a macro and a micro
sense.
“The original use of the term was as a form of praxis rather than
theory – a term used as a convention to refer to something that
otherwise cannot be discussed in words – and early writings such as
the Tao Te Ching and the I Ching make pains to distinguish
between conceptions of the Tao (sometimes referred to as “named
Tao”) and the Tao itself (the “unnamed Tao”), which cannot be
expressed or understood in language. Liu Da asserts that the Tao is
properly understood as an experiential and evolving concept, and
that there are not only cultural and religious differences in the
interpretation of the Tao, but personal differences that reflect the
character of individual practitioners.” 2
They say that while the Way and the Tao have a cosmological aspect,
they also refer to the many esoteric processes of merging with
Consciousness or the Energy Continuum, processes that include meditation
and mindfulness practices. I would separate Consciousness from the ways
of attaining/merging with it. They are two different topics, although some
argue there is no separation.
The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes are
some examples of the many ways of talking about Consciousness. More
redundant terminology. Before it’s over my hope is that you will have
learned how to recognize terms that are essential and those that are not, and
from the essentials we will have a fully start-to-finish usable version of core
teachings.
Note: Cleary brings up the notion of alchemical teachings, and the fact
that some do not go all the way, i.e., incorporate the backward-flowing
method into their teachings. For an in-depth discussion of a method that
leaves the backward-flowing method out, read this Kundalini Consortium
blog post.
CHAPTER I - PART 2 (CLEARY 3-9)
Wilhelm
The great One is the term given to that which has nothing above it. The
secret of the magic of life consists in using action in order to attain nonaction. One must not wish to leap over everything and penetrate directly.
The maxim handed down to us is to take in hand the work on human nature
(hsing). In doing it is important not to take any wrong path.
Author’s Commentary
Notice here the first appearance the terms action in order to attain nonaction in the Wilhelm and effort to arrive at effortlessness in the Cleary. We
leave them for the moment and pick them up later in the actual context of
the teaching.
Wilhelm’s translation also warns us not to try and skip over any steps,
meaning, I believe, attempting the backward-flowing method without
mastering the first two steps is ill-advised. This is one of the most difficult
elements of the method for the initiate to accept, especially nowadays with
strip-mall Dojos offering bargain-basement enlightenment. I might have
been tempted to skip in the beginning, but my lack of understanding of the
text held me back, a welcome benefit of following the solitary path. As
opposed to modern-day initiates who are spoon fed meaning — much to
their eventual detriment because much of it is wrong — I was only able to
progress as my practice stirred up energy, providing actual physical
feedback that corresponded to checkpoints in the text that confirmed I was
ready to attempt a next step.
CHAPTER I - PART 3 (CLEARY 10-11)
Wilhelm
The Golden Flower is the light. What color is the light? One uses the
Golden Flower as a symbol. It is the true energy of the transcendent great
One. The phrase “The lead of the water region has but one taste” refers to it.
The work on the circulation of the light depends entirely on the
backward-flowing movement, so that the thoughts (the place of heavenly
consciousness, the heavenly heart) are gathered together. The heavenly
heart lies between sun and moon (the two eyes).
The Book of the Yellow Castle says: “In the square inch field of the
square foot house, life can be regulated.” The square foot house is the face.
The square inch field in the face: what could that be other than the heavenly
heart? In the middle of the square inch dwells the splendor. In the purple
hall of the city of jade dwells the God of Utmost Emptiness and Life. The
Confucians call it the center of emptiness; the Buddhist, the terrace of
living; the Taoists, the ancestral land, or the yellow castle, or the dark pass,
or the space of former heaven.
Author’s Commentary
In this section, we see some of the key terms (in italics) from the
introduction being used. Most of this is repetition — the fact that the
kundalini process has moving parts: the circulation of the light depends
entirely on the backward-flowing movement. It’s important to visualize this
as a process leading you from one point to a series of other points.
Then again, Wilhelm’s third paragraph must be meaningful, after all the
“The square inch field” and the “Yellow Castle” sounds intriguing. Gotta
know what that means. If you think so, you’re wasting time; the heavenly
heart is the third eye, a “chakra” we’ll learn more about later on. Lots of
poetic phrases, but not much process. Situate the terms as best you can.
They will fall into place as your practice progresses. Focus on practice.
CHAPTER I - PART 4 (CLEARY 12-13)
Wilhelm
The heavenly heart is like the dwelling place, the light is the master.
Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body
appear before its throne, as, when a holy king has established the capital
and has laid down the fundamental rules of order, all the states approach
with tribute; or as, when the master is quiet and calm, men-servants and
maids obey his orders of their own accord, and each does his work.
Therefore you have only to make the light circulate: that is the deepest
and most wonderful secret. The light is easy to move, but difficult to fix. If
it is made to circulate long enough, then it crystallizes itself; that is the
natural spirit-body. This crystallized spirit is formed beyond the nine
heavens. It is the condition of which it is said in the Book of the Seal of the
Heart: “Silently thou fliest upward in the morning.”
Author’s Commentary
Cleary’s first paragraph reads: “The celestial mind is like a house; the
light is the master of the house.” His notes tell us: “The celestial mind refers
to unconditional consciousness, light is its function.”
The Wilhelm contains more detail, even though there are sudden
changes of topic in the middle of paragraphs. The second paragraph
“Therefore when the light circulates, the energies of the whole body appear
before its throne” explains one of the effects of raising kundalini, that, once
aroused, it starts fine-tuning the body immediately. An elixir manufactured
as part of the sexual sublimation process is introduced into the brain to
activate heretofore unused nadis, nodes, and nexuses.
In effect, the kundalini process uses the nervous system to inventory the
body and relays this information back to the brain, which then begins
sending corrective healing energy to the parts of the body that need it.
Among other things, its purpose is to jump start higher consciousness and
heal the body. This process, once activated cannot be controlled by “the
user;” it becomes autonomic.
There is a regulating mechanism that normally adjusts the energy so that
only the right amount is released. Unfortunately, in some spontaneous
cases, this mechanism sometimes releases more energy than the person can
support. This may result in somatic, metabolic, anatomical, and psychic
discomfort and imbalance.
“The light is easy to move, but difficult to fix.” I take this sentence to
mean that although it is not difficult to get the energy moving, it is difficult
to draw the energy up the spine into third eye (frequently associated with
the pituitary gland of the Endocrine system). I associate “Silently thou fliest
upward in the morning” with practicing meditation, which the book
suggests should take place in the morning, a suggestion I followed because
it was, as I eventually discovered by sitting at various times of day, best
suited for entering the deeper states. “Born in heaven” refers to the
awakening of the Primal Spirit; “Spirit-body” refers to the varied Hindu,
Buddhist, Tantric, and Taoist body models. Each system has many teachers;
each teacher, it seems, has his/her body model variations. The Kundalini
Yoga ten-body model takes it even further:
First Body (Soul Body) - the spark of the infinite at the core
Second Body (Negative Mind) - the protective and defensive aspect of
mind
Third Body (Positive Mind) - energetic and hopeful projection of mind
Fourth Body (Neutral Mind) - intuitive, integrates information from the
negative and positive minds
Fifth Body (Physical Body) - the human vehicle on Earth
Sixth Body (Arcline) - extends from ear to ear, across the hairline and
brow. Commonly known as a halo. Woman have a second arcline across the
chest. The arcline contains energy imprints of memories.
Seventh Body (Aura) - an electromagnetic field that surrounds the body;
the container of a person’s life force.
Eighth Body (Pranic Body) - connected with the breath, brings the life
force and energy in and out of your system.
Ninth Body (Subtle Body) - gives the subtle perceptual ability to sense
the infinite within the physical and material plane.
Tenth Body (Radiant Body) - gives spiritual royalty and radiance.
In my experience, once GFM releases kundalini, you jump from Fifth
Body to Ninth. The Tenth Body demands more work on mindfulness and
learning to live with kundalini. If you’re interested in the various chakra
and body theories, discussions, and diagrams extant on the Internet, I
suggest Googling them. They are numerous.
CHAPTER I - PART 5 (NO CLEARY EQUIVALENT)
Wilhelm
In carrying out this fundamental principle you need to seek for no other
methods, but must only concentrate your thoughts on it. The book Leng Yen
says: “By collecting the thoughts one can fly and will be born in heaven.”
Heaven is not the wide blue sky but the place where corporeality is begotten
in the house of the Creative. If one keeps this up for a long time there
develops quite naturally, in addition to the body, yet another spirit-body.
Author’s Commentary
The Wilhelm notes for this chapter make the following observations:
“This method is quite simple and easy. But there are so many
changing and transforming conditions connected with it that it is
said that not with one leap can a man suddenly get there.”
This may seem a bit presumptuous. But like anything, once you’re
familiar with it, it’s not only easier to do; it’s easier to understand. It took
me two years of hard work to agree with the above statement. Had I been
put off by its seeming oversimplification, I would have never completed the
journey. Today, with so many paths and techniques on the Internet, seekers
believe they can mix and match, borrow techniques from various teachings.
Although there’s nothing inherently wrong, I’m glad I stuck with one
practice for the very reason that, when mixing and matching, you have no
way of troubleshooting if things don’t work out.
CHAPTER I - PART 6 (CLEARY 14)
Wilhelm
The Golden Flower is the Elixir of Life (Chin-tan, golden pill). All
changes of spiritual consciousness depend upon the heart. There is a secret
charm which, although it works very accurately, is yet so fluid that it needs
extreme intelligence and clarity, and the most complete absorption and
tranquility. People without this highest degree of intelligence and
understanding do not find the way to apply the charm; people without this
utmost capacity for absorption and tranquility cannot keep fast hold of it.
Author’s Commentary
With the following rendering, “All changes of spiritual consciousness
depend upon the heart,” Wilhelm indicates he believes that changes in
spiritual consciousness are real — unlike Cleary, who translates this
passage as, “The transmission of spiritual illumination are all guided by the
mind.” Never mind the seeming heart vs. mind anomaly, this jibes with
Cleary’s statements later on in Chapter IV, in which he appears to ridicule
changes in consciousness as some kind of unworthy pursuit or perversion.
Success depends on detective work, trial and error experimentation, and
a karmic or quantum event that illuminates both the seeker’s need and
suitability for the kundalini. People are doing spiritual work on many levels.
Some are in the trenches; others are planning and analyzing from a distance.
No one is inherently misaligned.
6
II - THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE CONSCIOUS
SPIRIT
TH E OR IG INA L S P IR IT A N D TH E CON S CIOU S S P IR IT CLE A RY
“The lower heart moves like a strong, powerful commander who
despises the heavenly ruler because of his weakness, and has
usurped the leadership in affairs of state. But when the primal castle
can be fortified and defended, then it is as if a strong and wise ruler
sat upon the throne.”
A
lthough this chapter features more discussion of two key terms, the
fact that so much emphasis is placed on these two terms shows
how important they are to understanding of human ontology. They
may not be crucial in the first phases of praxis or in understanding the
teachings, but, later on, after kundalini rises, you will need to understand
what has happened in a metaphysical sense.
CHAPTER 2 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-6)
We come face to face with two notions addressed in the Introduction: the
Primal Spirit and the Conscious Spirit.
Cleary’s commentaries echo these notions, “The distinction between the
original spirit and the conscious spirit is one of the most important ideas in
Taoist psychology. The conscious spirit is historically conditioned; the
original spirit is primal and universal.” 1
I don’t much like the phrase “historically conditioned;” I prefer
something like “a creation of the ego and the perceptions of the senses,” but
it is historical if you consider the formation of the personality from birth. In
some people, their personalities are so tightly circumscribed by self-image,
it is impossible to see through the veil of ego and confront the individual’s
essence without the filters of an inflated self-worth.
Wilhelm
“Master Lu-tsu said, ‘In comparison with heaven and earth, man is like
a mayfly. But compared to the great Way, heaven and earth, too, are like a
bubble and a shadow. Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome
time and space.’”
“The energy of the seed, like heaven and earth, is transitory, but the
primal spirit is beyond the polar differences. Here is the place whence
heaven and earth derive their being. When students understand how to
grasp the primal spirit they overcome the polar opposites of light and
darkness and tarry no longer in the three worlds. But only he who has
envisioned human nature’s original face is able to do this.
“When men are set free from the womb, the primal spirit dwells in the
square inch (between the eyes), but the conscious spirit dwells below in the
heart. This lower fleshly heart has the shape of a large peach: it is covered
by the wings of the lungs, supported by the liver, and served by the bowels.
This heart is dependent on the outside world. If a man does not eat for one
day even, it feels extremely uncomfortable. If it hears something terrifying
it throbs; if it hears something enraging it stops; if it is faced with death it
becomes sad; if it sees something beautiful it is dazzled. But the heavenly
heart in the head, when would it have moved in the least? Dost thou ask:
Can the heavenly heart not move? Then I answer: How can the true thought
in the square inch move! If it really moves, that is not good. For when
ordinary men die, then it moves, but that is not good. It is best indeed if the
light has already solidified into a spirit-body and its life-energy gradually
penetrated the instincts and movements. But that is a secret which has not
been revealed for thousands of years.
“The lower heart moves like a strong, powerful commander who
despises the heavenly ruler because of his weakness, and has usurped the
leadership in affairs of state. But when the primal castle can be fortified and
defended, then it is as if a strong and wise ruler sat upon the throne. The
eyes start the light circulating like two ministers at the right and left who
support the ruler with all their might. When rule in the center is thus in
order, all those rebellious heroes will present themselves with lances
reversed ready to take orders.”
Author’s Commentary
“In comparison with heaven and earth, man is like a mayfly. But
compared to the great Way, heaven and earth, too, are like a bubble and a
shadow. Only the primal spirit and the true nature overcome time and
space” is both a poetic catch phrase and an accurate statement about the
eternal Primal Spirit’s role in reincarnating over lifetimes. The weakness
referred to is not so much the fact that the primal spirit is weak, but that it
becomes dormant at birth as the senses and social conditioning take over to
form the ego, splitting the individual into three entities — who you think
you are, how others see you, and who you really are. The challenge is to
awaken the primal spirit, thereby harmonizing the three self-images that no
longer trouble the spirit because it now realizes the eternal nature of the true
Being.
Most of the third paragraph concerns the notion of movement. Here,
Cleary’s translation is more coherent that Wilhelm’s: “...when the light has
crystallized in a spiritual body, gradually becoming consciously effective,
and is on the verge of moving into action.” No much similarity between the
two, is there? Movement, we learn has more to do with the conscious
efforts of the practitioner, who having practiced diligently, is about to
receive feedback from the body in the form of energy buildups and
sensations.
Is there a “little” and a “big” Primal Spirit? Yes, like the drop in the
ocean proverb: “You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in
a drop,” there’s you the drop as well as You the Ocean. You, the drop carries
over certain defining features into the next lifetime. Does your small “y”
Primal Spirit carry over certain learned qualities to the next lifetime? The
more enlightened you are, the more that is carried over. This may not relate
to the method as such, but it does give you a glimpse of human ontology
according to the Chinese tradition. Whether you believe or not depends not
so much on the notion of faith — so central in the Western tradition — but
on how your practice proceeds. As I continued to practice, I became aware
of the nature of Consciousness, that it is undivided and everlasting, the
result of envisioning human nature’s original face.
The last two paragraphs deal with the battle between the Primal Spirit
and the Conscious Spirit for ascendancy over your being — a struggle that
takes place in each of us. It describes the awakening of the five senses and
their subsequent effect on your being: the establishment of the ego and the
domination of emotion. For non-meditators, this is a concept so foreign, it is
almost impossible to grasp. Yet, many do get it — without kundalini. The
chakra located “between the eyes,” once awakened by energy cultivation
practices, acts as a shortcut in enabling the practitioner to overthrow the
domination of the ego and the senses.
CHAPTER 2 - PART 2 (CLEARY 7-9)
Wilhelm
“The way to the Elixir of Life knows as supreme magic, seed-water,
spirit-fire, and thought-earth: these three. What is seed-water? It is the true,
one energy of former heaven (eros). Spirit fire is the light (logos). Thoughtearth is the heavenly heart of the middle dwelling (intuition). Spirit-fire is
used for the foundation.”
Author’s Commentary
In Cleary’s notes on this section he goes into detail on each of the
leading notions in the above passage: “seed-water, spirit-fire, and thoughtearth,” explaining them to the point where all practical meaning becomes
lost. “Seed-water” is sexual energy; “spirit-fire” is awareness; “thoughtearth” is concentration. Are the definitions Wilhelm, Cleary, and I offer
going to help you practice the meditation? No, definitely not. Let me
explain: suppose you do succeed in raising kundalini. The way you perceive
what’s happened will be as different as your actual kundalini awakening
experience is from mine or anyone else’s. Therefore, you will probably
never completely agree with any other ontological definitions except your
own. One thing Cleary and I agree on: These terms can never be “prelearned;” they must be absorbed through actual experience.
CHAPTER 2 - PART 3 (CLEARY 10-13)
Wilhelm
“Ordinary men make their bodies through thoughts. The body is not
only the seven foot-tall outer body. In the body is the anima. The anima
adheres to consciousness, in order to affect it. Consciousness depends for its
origin on the anima. The anima is yin (feminine), it is the substance of
consciousness. As long as this consciousness is not interrupted, it continues
to beget from generation to generation, and the changes of form of the
anima and the transformations of substance are unceasing.
“But, besides this, there is the animus in which the spirit shelters. The
animus lives in the daytime in the eyes; at night it houses in the liver. When
living in the eyes, it sees; when housed in the liver, it dreams. Dreams are
the wanderings of the spirit through all nine heavens and all nine earths. But
whoever is in a dark and withdrawn mood on waking, and chained to his
bodily form, is fettered by the anima. Therefore the concentration of the
animus is brought about by the circulation of the light, and in this way the
spirit is maintained, the anima subjugated, and consciousness cut off.”
Author’s Commentary
Cleary’s translation (verses 10 and 11) help us understand the
terminology, but only part way because he, too, is coining new word
associations, as we shall see:
“People create the body by attention. The body is not just the
physical body, because there is a lower soul therein. The lower soul
functions in association with consciousness, and consciousness
develops based on the lower soul. The lower soul is dim; it is the
substance of consciousness. If consciousness is not interrupted,
transformation and transmutation of the lower soul go on endlessly
from lifetime to lifetime, generation to generation.
“Then there is the higher soul, which is where the spirit is
concealed. The higher soul resides in the eyes during the day and
lodges in the liver at night. When it resides in the eyes, it sees; when
it lodges in the liver, it dreams.” 2
This is the Cleary version of the Wilhelm passage that begins with
“Ordinary men make their bodies...” and ends with “...when housed in the
liver, it dreams.” As you can see, the greatest breach of translator’s license
is Wilhelm’s substitution of animus and anima for higher soul and lower
soul. This is really stretching it, compounding readers’ already sometimes
fruitless search for meaning with misleading self-promotional nonsequiturs. But Cleary then subverts his criticism of Wilhelm: “Wilhelm uses
the term anima for lower soul and animus for higher soul. In his
introduction he deemphasizes the gender associations of yin and yang, but
in connection with the concept of souls Wilhelm calls the anima feminine
and the animus masculine. Jung then proceeds to exaggerate this distortion
even further in his own disquisition on feminine and masculine
psychologies. None of this gets to the heart of the discussion of our text.” 3
I agree. So how does Cleary subvert his own criticism? Very simply, by
introducing the lower and higher soul concepts, which he then associates
with consciousness and spirit respectively. Perhaps he’s trapped by the
Chinese original, but aren’t these two terms synonyms for terms we’ve
already encountered, namely conscious spirit and primal spirit? How many
synonyms should the motivated reader have to put up with? Cleary should
have had the gumption to use his terms, Conscious Spirit and Original
Spirit in order to maintain some semblance of consistency and to avoid
confusion. If he’d opted for consistency, Wilhelm’s sentence becomes “All
sensuous desires and impulses of anger are effects of the conscious spirit...”
and Cleary’s becomes “All lust affecting the temperament is the doing of
the conscious spirit.” This way we eliminate extra layers of confusion:
anima = lower soul = conscious spirit; animus = higher soul = primal
spirit. 4 Stick with one term.
One notion that should not be controversial, but is, at least culturally, is
the statement that if the “conscious spirit is not interrupted,” the
individual’s destiny continues a “beginning-less cycle of repeated birth,
mundane existence and dying again” or samsara. 5 The notion of
reincarnation is foreign to most Westerners. In the East, there’s no
controversy — their traditions are grounded in Taoism, Buddhism, and
Hinduism, which not only accept reincarnation, their writings on the subject
— The Tibetan Book of the Dead, for example — catalog a complete
cosmology of it. In the West, however, there’s the notion that we only go
around once, as depicted culturally in the Schlitz Beer commercials of the
1960s.
“In 1966, Burnett created the well-known tagline ‘When you’re out
of Schlitz, you’re out of beer’ for the Schlitz Brewing Company.
The agency boosted Schlitz’s name recognition with the ‘Gusto’
campaign. Consumers were invited to ‘Enjoy real gusto,’ ‘Reach for
the gusto,’ ‘Go for the gusto’ and reminded that ‘You only go
around once in life: Go for all the gusto you can.’” 6
Even back in 1966 when this ad first appeared, and even though I
wasn’t a spiritual seeker as yet, I felt the Schlitz beer commercial’s message
about only going around once was a bit extreme. I had this gnawing
premonition that there was more to existence than a straight-up one life, one
death, then nothingness.
But think about it: Schlitz wouldn’t have run the commercial if they
hadn’t been convinced that most of America agreed, that Americans
believed the one life trope. I’m not sure whether more people now admit the
possibility of reincarnation, but the Schlitz mindset was operative back
then. Perhaps it was the fact that America was at the height of the Vietnam
War when so many lives were being lost needlessly. Nevertheless, that’s the
difference between East and West, or it used to be, sometime
...somewhere... in a forgotten kingdom, the Shanghai-la of past lives.
Have things changed since that day? Are Americans, and those in other
Western countries, now experiencing fewer “sensuous desires and impulses
of anger?” Are today’s beer commercials any different in tone or substance?
Are people more likely to be struggling against the influence of the
Conscious Spirit, attempting to bring the Original Primal Spirit to the fore?
Not if the current wave of 2017 beer commercials is any indication; they’re
just as celebratory and self-indulgent. Celebrating what is the question?
Empty lives and aimless futures — escape to samsara?
If you’re tired of this topic, get used to it: it’s the central thesis of the
SGF. I understand how it might make you roll your eyes, but when you’ve
practiced the method, awakened kundalini, you’ll realize that reincarnation
is not only true, it alludes to improving your spiritual status during your
current lifetime in order to reincarnate into a form with higher spiritual
consciousness. Jung’s gambit of co-opting meaning by introducing his
homegrown psychology terms Anima and Animus adds nothing to the
teachings; it’s pure cultural bias. Not only do you not need them to practice
the method, these Jungian terms are in no way equivalent to the true sense
or teachings of the text. What’s more, Anima and Animus have distasteful
sexist connotations, which, even if they could be accurately ascribed to real
male and female characteristics, would still be problematic.
CHAPTER 2 - PART 4 (CLEARY 14-16)
Wilhelm
“The method used by the ancients for escaping from the world consisted
in melting out completely the slag of darkness in order to return to the
purely creative. This is nothing more than a reduction of the anima and a
completion of the animus. And the circulation of the light is the magical
means of reducing the dark, and gaining mastery over the anima. Even if
the work is not directed towards bringing back the Creative, but confines
itself to the magical means of the circulation of the light, it is just the light
that is the Creative. By means of its circulation, one returns to the Creative.
If this method is followed, plenty of seed-water will be present of itself; the
spirit fire will be ignited, and the thought-earth will solidify and crystallize.
And thus the holy fruit matures.”
Author’s Commentary
Substitute “the slag of darkness” for “the purposeless life” and “the
creative” for “the realized life” and you understand they are talking about
life before kundalini and life after kundalini. Nevertheless, at no time does
the text tell us that all comes together once kundalini is awakened. You still
have to listen to kundalini which requires a mindfulness that most of us find
difficult to practice. Even after kundalini becomes active, the ego is still
very strong, and not easily overcome. Kundalini is a great first step, and
although it does offer the prospect of higher consciousness, you have to
work on emotional control at the same time.
CHAPTER 2 - PART 5 (CLEARY 17-20)
Wilhelm
“The scarabaeus rolls his ball and in the ball there develops life as the
result of the undivided effort of his spiritual concentration. If now an
embryo can grow in manure, and shed its shells, why then should not the
dwelling place of our heavenly heart also be able to create a body if we
concentrate the spirit upon it?
“The one effective, true human nature (logos united with vitality), when
it descends into the house of the Creative, divides into animus and anima.
The animus is in the heavenly heart. It is of the nature of light; it is the
power of lightness and purity. It is that which we have received from the
great emptiness, that which is identical in form with the primordial
beginning. The anima partakes of the nature of the dark. It is the energy of
the heavy and the turbid; it is bound to the bodily fleshly heart. The animus
loves life. The anima seeks death. All sensuous desires and impulses of
anger are effects of the anima; it is the conscious spirit which after death is
nourished on blood, but which, during life, is in greatest distress. The dark
returns to darkness and like things attract each other according to their kind.
But the pupil understands how to distill the dark anima completely so that it
transforms itself into pure light (yang).”
Author’s Commentary
This section is a reiteration of previous notions in this chapter. We now
understand that animus = higher soul = primal spirit is a regenerative entity
and anima = lower soul = conscious spirit is a degenerative entity. Call it
Life Force, Energy Continuum, or as Gopi Krishna does, evolutionary
impulse — there is a positive force and a negative one; Death Wish,
Thanatos, self-destruction. Once the student begins a GFM practice, he
realizes he is actually using the tools for creating a purposeful life. This
realization and kundalini beget an entirely new Being.
As for Jung, Cleary’s comments on this section tell us once again that
Jung failed in purpose as well as understanding:
“Since Jung’s “collective unconscious” still has form, from the point
of view of the golden flower it must therefore be classified with the
lower soul and ordinary mind; his hope was to make this conscious
in order to transcend it, but Jung himself appears to have become so
involved in the discovery and discussion of the unconscious that he
became attached to it and as a consequence was never able to
experience the higher soul and open the golden flower. His
commentaries on Wilhelm’s translation bear witness to this, as do
his other writings on Eastern mysticism.” 7
Thus, according to Cleary, Jung is little more than a paid endorser, like a
athlete who promotes a breakfast food he doesn’t eat.
7
III - CIRCUL ATION OF THE LIGHT AND
PROTECTION OF THE CENTER
TU R N ING TH E LIG H T A ROU N D A N D KE E P ING TO TH E
CE N TE R - CLE A RY
“Therefore the Way of the Golden Flower depends wholly on the
backward-flowing method.”
CHAPTER 3 - PART 1
“M
WILHELM
aster Lu-tsu said, since when has the expression
‘circulation of the light’ been revealed? It was revealed
by the ‘True Men of the Beginning of Form’ (Kuan Yinhsi). When the light is made to move in a circle, all the energies of heaven
and earth, of the light and the dark, are crystallized. That is what is termed
seed-like thinking, or purification of the energy, or purification of the idea.
When one begins to apply this magic it is as if, in the middle of being, there
were non-being. When in the course of time the work is completed, and
beyond the body there is a body, it is as if, in the middle of non-being, there
were being. Only after concentrated work of a hundred days will the light
be genuine, then only will it become spirit-fire. After a hundred days there
develops by itself in the midst of the light a point of the true light-pole
(yang). Then suddenly there develops the seed pearl. It is as if man and
woman embraced and a conception took place. Then one must be quite still
and wait. The circulation of the light is the epoch of fire.
“In the midst of primal transformation, the radiance of the light (yangkuang), is the determining thing. In the physical world it is the sun; in man,
the eye. The radiation and dissipation of spiritual consciousness is chiefly
brought about by this energy when it is directed outward (flows downward).
Therefore the Way of the Golden Flower depends wholly on the backwardflowing method.
“The circulation of the light is not only a circulation of the seedblossom of the individual body, but it is even a circulation of the true,
creative, formative energies. It is not a momentary fantasy, but the
exhaustion of the cycle (soul-migration) of all the aeons.”
Author’s Commentary
Although so many variations of kundalini triggers and effects and
overlapping terminology make deciphering the text difficult, it is possible to
extract a structured meditation method from such ambiguity, which I have
consolidated into GFM. One by one the critical terms have to be agreed on.
For example, take the term “circulation of the light.” It’s not clear from the
above passage whether it’s an effect of mastering the backward-flowing
method or whether they occur at the same time. A third possibility is that
the circulation of the light triggers the backward-flowing method (reversal).
If I relied only on the above passage, I’d be tempted to believe Cleary’s
interpretation of Chapter III-¶5, which corresponds to Wilhelm’s last
sentence in the above.
According to Cleary: “Turning the light around is turning around the
energy of creation in that the total experience of the world depends on the
orientation of the mind.” 1 Not only do I not agree with Cleary, Chapter I-¶2
states that the backward-flowing technique is the key to circulating the
light: “The work on the circulation of the light depends entirely on the
backward-flowing movement.” As for Cleary stating that it depends on
“orientation of the mind,” this contradicts my experience; circulating the
light (Cleary’s turning the light around) depends on the backward-flowing
method, which depends on sexual sublimation, which depends on
diaphragmatic deep breathing.
To make the method work, you must respect these dependencies,
something today’s seekers find hard to do. By and large, they want to “leap
over.”
Again, my own experience is the final arbiter for the explaining the
meditation practice accurately. How else could it be? The rest are polemics
and abstractions — back and forth quibbling over terms. Not only do I
suggest you avoid the terminology battles, I suggest you draw from your
own experience as I have in writing my books.
As soon as my implementation of the backward-flowing method came
to fruition — distilled sexual energy reached the brain — a glowing disk of
light appeared inside my head, between my two eyes, and started to
undulate, vibrate, finally rotate like a spinning wheel, brighter sometimes,
fainter at others. This was something new, a physical condition that had
never happened to me before kundalini.
Nevertheless, both Cleary and Wilhelm do infer that the light can be
moved around the body. This is an effect I know nothing about. Doesn’t
mean it cannot happen, merely that for me the light circulates as I describe
above. As for energy moving around my body, that is a daily occurrence.
The phrase “the middle of non-being, there were being” means to me
that once the light starts to circulate there is 1) a physical feeling that the
body is now part of a surrounding energy continuum that stretches to the
dimensions of the universe and, perhaps beyond and, 2) that It is now doing
you. Once the light circulates, you know that you are part of something
much larger than your physical body. Barriers disappear, including the
seeming barrier between life and death. It no longer exists; you blend into
eternity, yet you are part of the material world — one foot in the physical,
the other in the metaphysical. This passage also warns you to avoid “the
radiation and dissipation of spiritual consciousness” and to be aware of the
reasons for it, namely squandering sexual energy.
Once again, keep your eyes on the prize...meaning you don’t actually
need to know these things to practice. Chances are, if you succeed, the
process won’t happen the way it did for me, for any of my students, or for
any of the ancients in the SGF.
Cleary does provide a coherent explanation for so-called “hundred
days” to success notion, mentioned throughout both editions: “The period
of a hundred days is commonly mentioned in Taoist texts as the length of
time required to set up the foundation by stabilizing the concentration of
consciousness. The actual time may be different.” I found that it depends on
how scrupulously practitioners approach diaphragmatic deep breathing. If
they assume they don’t have to make sure the diaphragm is part of the
process, they will fail. Regularizing the breath must be done slowly and
surely.
CHAPTER 3 - PART 2 (CLEARY 6-13)
Wilhelm
“Therefore the duration of a breath means a year according to human
reckoning and a hundred years measured by the long night of the nine paths
(of reincarnation). After a man has the one sound of individuation (ho)
behind him, he will be born outward according to the circumstances, and
until his old age he will never look backward. The energy of the light
exhausts itself and trickles away. That brings the ninefold darkness (of
reincarnations) into the world. In the book Leng Yen it is said: ‘By
concentrating the thoughts, one can fly; by concentrating the desires, one
falls.’ When a pupil takes little care of his thoughts and much care of his
desires, he gets into the path of submersion. Only through contemplation
and quietness does true intuition arise: for that the backward-flowing
method is necessary.
“In the Book of the Secret Correspondences it is said: ‘Release is in the
eye.’ In the Simple Questions of the Yellow Ruler it is said: ‘The seedblossoms of the human body must be concentrated upward in the empty
space.’ This refers to it. Immortality is contained in this sentence and also
the overcoming of the world is contained in it. This is the common goal of
all religions.
“The light is not in the body alone, nor is it only outside the body.
Mountains and rivers and the great earth are lit by sun and moon; all that is
this light. Therefore it is not only within the body. Understanding and
clarity, perception and enlightenment, and all movements (of the spirit) are
likewise this light; therefore it is not just something outside the body. The
light-flower of heaven and earth fills all the thousand spaces. But also the
light-flower of the individual body passes through heaven and covers the
earth. Therefore, as soon as the light is circulating, heaven and earth,
mountains and rivers, are all circulating with it at the same time. To
concentrate the seed-flower of the human body above the eyes, that is the
great key of the human body. Children, take heed! If for a day you do not
practice meditation, this light streams out, who knows whither? If you only
meditate for a quarter of an hour, by it you can do away with a thousand
births. All methods end in quietness. This marvelous magic cannot be
fathomed.
“But when the practice is started, one must press on from the obvious to
the profound, from the coarse to the fine. Everything depends on there
being no interruption. The beginning and the end of the practice must be
one. In between there are cooler and warmer moments, that goes without
saying. But the goal must be to reach the vastness of heaven and the depths
of the sea, so that all methods seem quite easy and taken for granted. Only
then have we mastered it.
“All holy men have bequeathed this to one another: nothing is possible
without contemplation (fang-chao, reflection). When Confucius says:
‘Perceiving brings one to the goal;’ or when the Buddha calls it: ‘The vision
of the heart;’ or Lao-tse says: ‘Inner vision”, it is all the same.’”
Author’s Commentary
These passages open with what Cleary describes, “...as the experience
of the mental equivalent of thirty-six thousand years within one year of
concentration.” 2 Through meditation the practitioner enters a new
dimension of time, one based on total submersion into concentration on
breathing. As the breath slows and becomes regular, so does the sense of
time.
It then compares two lifestyles, the first under the sway of the
Conscious Spirit, the second attuned to the Primal Spirit — a life dominated
by desire versus one representing “a process of accelerated conscious
evolution.” 3 This is a common theme, one already mentioned. The passage
ends with another invocation of the backward-flowing method.
What follows is a wordy discussion of the sublimation process, its
importance to the method and to life, and finally the necessity of remaining
steadfast in meditation. “All methods end in quietness” is a difficult concept
for Westerners who believe that violent exercise like hot Yoga is the path to
spiritual mastery. The SGF is all about stillness and less is more. DDB is
about lowering the heart rate, which counter-intuitively leads to a buildup of
distilled sexual energy that can then be drawn up the spine to the brain.
Violent exercise actually has the opposite effect; it dissipates energy.
Key to this section is the following advice: “Everything depends on
there being no interruption. The beginning and the end of the practice must
be one. In between there are cooler and warmer moments, that goes without
saying” the idea being that nothing can be sustained at a peak over time,
that highs and lows are to be expected, but one must practice faithfully, in
spite of ups and downs. This is one of the most difficult strictures to obey.
CHAPTER 3 - PART 3 (CLEARY 14)
Wilhelm
“Anyone can talk about reflection, but he cannot master it if he does not
know what the word means. What has to be reversed by reflection is the
self-conscious heart, which has to direct itself towards that point where the
formative spirit is not yet manifest. Within our six-foot body we must strive
for the form which existed before the laying down of heaven and earth. If
today people sit and meditate only one or two hours, looking only at their
own egos, and call this reflection, how can anything come of it?
“The two founders of Buddhism and Taoism have taught that one
should look at the tip of one’s nose. But they did not mean that one should
fasten one’s thoughts to the tip of the nose. Neither did they mean that,
while the eyes were looking at the tip of the nose, the thoughts should be
concentrated on the yellow middle. Wherever the eye looks, the heart is
directed also. How can it be directed at the same time upward (yellow
middle), and downward (tip of the nose), or alternatively, so that it is now
up, now down? All that means confusing the finger which points to the
moon with the moon itself.
“What then is really meant by this? The expression “tip of the nose” is
very cleverly chosen. The nose must serve the eyes as a guideline. If one is
not guided by the nose, either one opens wide the eyes and looks into the
distance, so that the nose is not seen, or the lids shut too much, so that the
eyes close, and again the nose is not seen. But when the eyes are opened too
wide, one makes the mistake of directing them outward, whereby one is
easily distracted. If they are closed too much, one makes the mistake of
letting them turn inward, whereby one easily sinks into a dreamy reverie.
Only when the eyelids are lowered properly halfway is the tip of the nose
seen in just the right way. Therefore it is taken as a guideline. The main
thing is to lower the eyelids in the right way, and then to allow the light to
streaming of itself; without effort, wanting the light to stream in
concentratedly. Looking at the tip of the nose serves only as the beginning
of the inner concentration, so that the eyes are brought into the right
direction for looking, and then are held to the guideline: after that, one can
let it be. That is the way a mason hangs up a plumb-line. As soon as he has
hung it up, he guides his work by it without continually bothering himself
to look at the plumb-line.
“Fixating contemplation is a Buddhist method which has not by any
means been handed down as a secret.
“One looks with both eyes at the tip of the nose, sits upright and in a
comfortable position, and holds the heart to the center in the midst of
conditions. In Taoism it is called the yellow middle, in Buddhism the center
of the midst of conditions. The two are the same. It is not necessarily mean
the middle of the head. It is only a matter of fixing one’s thinking on the
point which lies exactly between two eyes. Then all is well. The light is
something extremely mobile. When one fixes the thought on the mid-point
between the two eyes, the light streams in of its own accord. It is not
necessary to direct the attention especially to the middle castle. In these few
words the most important thing is contained.”
Author’s Commentary
This section loses its one-to-one equivalence with Cleary in that
Cleary’s Section 14, compared to Wilhelm’s five paragraphs above, consists
of the following very brief sentence:
“The essential teaching is summarized above; as for the rest, matters
of entering and exiting stillness, the prelude and the aftermath, one
should use the book Small Stopping and Seeing 4 for a touchstone”
In his notes, Cleary explains it thusly: “Small Stopping and Seeing is a
classic compendium of basic meditation techniques, composed by the
founder of Tian-tai Buddhism in the sixth century AD. Wilhelm does not
translate the passage.” But neither does Cleary; he merely points the reader
in its direction. The mystery is solved when we discover that Small
Stopping and Seeing is not only available for sale on Amazon, but has also
been translated by none other than Thomas Cleary.
Cleary’s Section 14 corresponds to Wilhelm’s ¶1-5 (Chapter 3 - Part 3)
above, and it’s far more text than Cleary cares to include — thus the loss of
one-to-one equivalence. I take this to indicate that Cleary preferred that
readers acquire his translation of Small Stopping and Seeing to translating
this section of the SGF, which implies that Wilhelm must have done exactly
that — summarized Small Stopping and Seeing, and if Cleary is to be
believed: getting most of it wrong. Not knowing Chinese, I can’t go to the
original text to arbitrate this disagreement. Nevertheless, in spite of Cleary’s
misgivings, I was able to extract the essential meditation techniques from
the Wilhelm version and build my practice around them.
Very few individuals, whether they work alone, or under the guidance of
a teacher, get these techniques right the first time — without a little
tweaking. I know I didn’t. First, there’s the posture issue. Full lotus, half
lotus, reclining, walking? I was able to use the full lotus comfortably. The
choice of a posture depends on your morphology. The point is not to learn
to sit in the full lotus; it’s to learn to breathe correctly. If that means having
to recline, so be it. Next, there’s the role of the eyes and the tongue. The
above instructions are quite clear: “The nose must serve the eyes as a
guideline.” Lowering the eyelids and situating the nose in the center. If it’s
off to the side after lowering your eyelids, there’s something wrong with
your symmetry.
The true purpose of this section is to find and maintain your center
because pranic energy begins to awaken at the center. If the light starts to
circulate — the inner light, that is — you’ll know that you’ve not only
found your center, it is beginning to open. Once the center starts to open,
it’s as if an invisible, “energetic superhighway” opens all along the spine,
from the pubic region to the crown of the head. This is an entirely physical
process although you may not feel any effects. Some people do; some don’t.
What happens, albeit in the background, is a kind of pulling apart of the two
halves of the body that reveals and activates an invisible-to-material-science
center channel containing energy nodes (chakras) and conduits (nadis)
along the spine. Once the breathing is regulated, the transmutation process
begins distilling sexual energy into an elixir, which as it climbs upward,
opens the chakras one by one. How does it climb upward? Climbing
upward is a result of the backward-flowing method. (We’re jumping ahead
here, but I wanted to include this preview so that you become aware of the
importance of finding, revealing, and expanding “the center”.)
As the center expands, energy flows along the various conduits of the
superhighway. It’s a slow, invisible process that begins with finding the
center and regulating the breathing. Some methods say that fixing the
tongue to the roof of the mouth completes a kind of electrical circuit,
facilitating the centering process. Athletes, artists, dancers are familiar with
the center as they may have experienced moments of release, being in the
zone, or near ecstasy in performance. Others may be more inhibited. That’s
what meditation’s all about: release from past programming. Once the
posture and focus are achieved, it’s time to empty the mind and regulate the
breathing.
Whether it was a flight of fancy or his translation of the actual text, I
like Wilhelm’s rendering of the way a mason uses his plumb-line. As I have
done masonry work on a house in France, I found it a useful image in
finding the center and maintaining it.
CHAPTER 3 - PART 4 (CLEARY 15-18)
Wilhelm
“‘The center in the midst of conditions’ is a very subtle expression. The
center is omnipresent; everything is contained in it; it is connected with the
release of the whole process of creation. The condition is the portal. The
condition, that is, the fulfillment of this condition, makes the beginning, but
it does not bring about the rest with inevitable necessity. The meaning of
these two words is very fluid and subtle.
“Fixating contemplation is indispensable; it ensures the making fast of
the enlightenment. Only one must not stay sitting rigidly if worldly
thoughts come up, but one must examine where the thought is, where it
began, and where it fades out. Nothing is gained by pushing reflection
further. One must be content to see the thought arose, and not seek beyond
the point of origin; for to find the heart (consciousness, to get behind
consciousness with consciousness), that cannot be done. Together we want
to bring the states of the heart to rest; that is true contemplation. What
contradicts it is false contemplation. That leads to no goal. When the flight
of the thoughts keeps extending further, one should stop and begin
contemplating. Let one contemplate and then start fixating again. That is the
double method of making fast the enlightenment. It means the circulation of
the light. The circulation is fixation. The light is contemplation. Fixation
without contemplation is circulation without light. Contemplation without
fixation is light without circulation! Take note of that!”
Author’s Commentary
Once again, Cleary takes Wilhelm to task in his notes for this section. 5
His objections are too long — four pages in all — to cite here, so I’ll
summarize them, which, I might add is not an easy task, because they are so
clouded by his exhaustive overlay of Taoist and Buddhist references. In
essence, however, his objections are simple: He believes that through faulty
interpretations and misconstructions Wilhelm misleads readers into
believing that the center has a real physical locus, whereas his opinion,
bolstered by the texts he cites, opposes this possibility:
“Liu also affirms the subtlety of the center, and the delicacy of the
mental posture of focus on the center, to which he denies any
physical location as suggested by Wilhelm’s version of the Golden
Flower text.” 6
Funny, having read Wilhelm’s translation of the SGF many years before
Cleary’s translation even existed, that’s exactly what I understood: that the
center is real. Not only did I understand it that way, I found the physical
center, practiced the meditation, and watched events unfold much the same
way as described above. As for Cleary’s assertion that believing the center
to be physical is dangerous, it depends on what you’re seeking. If you read
Wilhelm and Cleary only to become embroiled in scholarly argument,
what’s the point of learning to regulate the breath? Lower the eyelids? Or
touch the tongue to the roof of the mouth? Chances are you’re looking for
something else. If, however, you’re using the text to awaken kundalini,
you’ll probably want to understand real physical energy cultivation
techniques, how to apply them, as well as the metaphysical effects these
techniques induce. Cleary seems to believe that arguing about metaphysical
terms actually produces enlightenment when the reality is that the
metaphysical proceeds from the physical.
“The presence of numerous such fragmentary yogic interpretations
out of character with the overall teaching of the text leads me to
suspect that Wilhelm’s text has been doctored by quasi-Taoist
cultists, quite possibly disaffected Confucians, who were devoted or
addicted to altered states of consciousness.” 7
Wilhelm is no longer here to defend his interpretation or his good name.
As for those wily Confucians and quasi-Taoist cultists, I can picture it. On
orders from Dr. Goebbels himself Nazi agents dressed in Confucian robes
and quasi-Taoist cultist attire sneak into Kegan Paul, Tranch and Trübner,
Wilhelm’s British publisher’s London office in 1931 to substitute doctored
pages of the text for Wilhelm’s originals. Those darned Nazis stopped at
nothing to undermine the burgeoning German spiritual movement!
As for altered states of consciousness, isn’t that what the spiritual quest
is all about — the desire to become more conscious, and finding ways to do
just that? As for the character of the text, Cleary’s chose one path; Wilhelm
another. To the extent that metaphysical actuality can be proven, how can
the reader decide which path is authentic and factual? An impartial
benchmark might be: an account by someone who deciphered and practiced
Wilhelm’s version of the SGF, thereby using his body as a laboratory to
prove the validity of the Wilhelm version. Yes, despite its shortcomings,
which I make no attempt to hide, the underlying method does work.
The above lead-in is background to the real substance of the text in this
section, which is all about Fixing Contemplation, i.e., quieting the mind.
Both Wilhelm and Cleary offer their versions of the text that feature
suggestions on not only how to clear the mind, but also on the philosophical
postulate that the mind cannot be cleared. When I encountered this section
and tried to apply it to my practice, I got so mixed up in the rhetoric that I
made up my mind to find another solution, which turned out to be the
simple act of counting. This activity — counting to myself one, two, three,
four on inhale, one, two, three, four on hold, one, two, three, four on exhale,
one, two, three, four on hold, starting over — occupied the space normally
filled by random thoughts — The ten-thousand things. I practiced counting
while sitting, walking, driving, lying down until the counting and
everything else faded away of its own accord and I was able to meditate
undisturbed. Readers may find other ways of managing this challenge.
Nevertheless, quieting the mind is a big issue, running in parallel as it
does with the work on breathing, which we will undertake to examine in the
next chapter.
8
IV - CIRCUL ATION OF THE LIGHT AND
MAKING THE BREATHING RHY THMICAL
TU R N ING TH E LIG H T A ROU N D A N D TU N ING TH E
BR E ATH ING - CLE A RY
CHAPTER 4 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-4)
“Meditation is not a question of effort because all effort is going to
be through the mind, of the mind, by the mind. How can it take you
beyond the mind? You will go round and round IN the mind. You
have to wake up! Mind is sleep. Mind is a constant process of
dreaming, desiring, thoughts, memories.” 1
— OSHO
“M
WILHELM
aster Lu-tsu said, The decision must be carried out with a
collected heart, and not seeking success; success will
come of itself. In the first period of release there are
chiefly two mistakes: indolence and distraction. But that can be remedied;
the heart must not enter into the breathing too completely. Breathing comes
from the heart. What comes out of the heart is breath. As soon as the heart
stirs, there develops breath-energy. Breath-energy is originally transformed
activity of the heart. When our ideas go very fast they imperceptibly pass
into fantasies which are always accompanied by the drawing of a breath,
because this inner and outer breathing hangs together like tone and echo.
Daily we draw innumerable breaths and have an equal number of fantasies.
And thus the clarity of the spirit ebbs away as wood dries out and ashes
die.”
Author’s Commentary
The first part of this section warns against the age-old beginner’s
bugaboo of stirred-up expectations, advising the practitioner to avoid
hoping and praying for success, which the text rightfully claims will come
of its own accord. I would add that the subtext here cautions against
skipping steps in the method — a side effect of over-eager expectations. If
you focus only on success, you tend to cut corners, or at least try to. That
leads to a confusion, where the practitioner starts to flounder and asks
adepts to define a clear path to success, as if it is possible for a person
who’s practiced the method successfully to lay out a road map for the
disoriented beginner. This is indolence — an excuse for not doing the work,
which frequently manifests itself in blaming others for not making the
method clear enough. Only by practicing the method and mastering each
step in order one-at-a-time can the beginner acquire the insights necessary
for success. What are these insights? Feedback from the body in the form of
sensations and energy buildups and arousals. They will come, but only if
you practice patiently.
In addition, the connection between the breath and heart is introduced
here — that breathing is the autonomic result of heartbeat. Since this
section [Cleary’s Chapter 4 (¶2-4)] is mostly ontological background, and
not technique, I refer you to his comments here. 2
CHAPTER 4 - PART 2 (CLEARY 5-6)
Wilhelm
“So, then, should a man have no imagining in his mind? One cannot be
without imaginings. Should one not breathe? One cannot do without
breathing. The best way is to make a medicine of the illness. Since heart
and breath are mutually dependent, the circulation of the light must be
united with the rhythm of breathing. For this, light of the ear is above all
necessary. There is a light of the eye and a light of the ear. The light of the
eye is the united light of the sun and moon outside. The light of the ear is
the united seed of sun and moon within. The seed is thus the light in
crystallized form. Both have the same origin and are different only in name.
Therefore, understanding (ear) and clarity (eye) are one and the same
effective light.”
Author’s Commentary
In Cleary’s Comment Five (¶5), he details some research on misguided
Taoist and Buddhist practices. Again, this is research, not technique. In
Comment Six, he states, “Here the ‘light of the eyes’ refers to awareness of
the world at large, while ‘light of the ears’ refers to formless inner
awareness.” 3 This is a helpful ontological insight that I experienced as It
breathing me — that once I was able to slow down the breathing and quell
the “ten thousand things,” I was no longer aware of anything else except
that I was part of the Energy Continuum and It was breathing me. The
room, my body, my mind, the world beyond my Being were in It together.
“Formless inner” and “world at large” are one and the same. Ask me how I
got there and I refer you to the techniques discussed in the next section.
There’s also a mention of the seed in the Wilhelm version, which I
identify as the semen that correct breathing distills into an elixir (the light in
crystallized form) and makes ready for kundalini arousal.
CHAPTER 4 - PART 3 (CLEARY 7-10)
Wilhelm
“In sitting down, after lowering the lids, one uses the eyes to establish a
plumb line and then shifts the light downward. But if the transposition
downward is not successful, then the heart is directed towards listening to
the breathing. One should not be able to hear with the ear the outgoing and
intaking of the breath. What one hears is that it has no tone. As soon as it
has tone, the breathing is rough and superficial, and does not penetrate into
the open. Then the heart must be made quite light and insignificant. The
more it is released, the less it becomes; the less it is, the quieter. All at once
it becomes so quiet that it stops. Then the true breathing is manifested and
the form of the heart comes to consciousness. If the heart is light, the
breathing is light, for every movement of the heart affects breath-energy. If
breathing is light, the heart is light, for every movement of breath-energy
affects the heart. In order to steady the heart, one begins by taking care of
the breath-energy. The heart cannot be influenced directly. Therefore, the
breath-energy is used as a handle, and this is what is called maintenance of
the concentrated breath-energy.”
Author’s Commentary
In my practice, when I observed the little-by-little slowing of the breath,
I began to use my hearing in a kind of biofeedback loop to regulate the
process. I realized that I could control the amplification of my breath, by
first counting (making it regular) and second by incrementally reducing its
loudness (the heart is directed towards listening to the breathing). Day by
day, session by session, the breath became quieter and quieter so that in a
completely quiet room, cutoff from all outside noise, I could not detect any
sound during exhalation or inhalation. Don’t imagine that this is a mental
exercise; it’s physical. Instead of the souped-up breathing of Kundalini
Yoga, the muscles of the diaphragm are trained to manage the breathing
process. They take it over, gradually eliminating any sounds emanating
from the chest, nose, or throat. Less is more.
As for using the breath as a handle, the above technique is the handle.
How does it work? You cannot command the heart to beat slower or faster;
an autonomic process regulates heartbeat, i.e., the heart adjusts its rhythm to
the physical and mental efforts of the moment. In meditation, the goal is
less activity — silence the breathing and quell the mind. As the breath
slows down, the number of heartbeats per minute also decreases.
Controlling the breath provides the handle for regulating the heartbeat,
which in turn starts the sexual sublimation process, which manifests itself in
an energy buildup in the lower belly. A spontaneous activity that you will
detect. Alas, because every individual is anatomically and metabolically
different, the exact location, frequency, and intensity of these sensations
may vary. Don’t ask someone to tell you how, when or where; some things
in this method are left up to you.
CHAPTER 4 - PART 4 (CLEARY 11-13)
Wilhelm
“Children, do you not understand the nature of movement? Movement
can be produced by outside means. It is only another name for mastery. One
can make the heart move merely by running. Should one not also be able to
bring it to rest by concentrated quietness? The great holy ones who knew
how the heart and breath-energy mutually influence one another have
thought out an easier procedure in order to help posterity.
“In the Book of the Elixir it is said: ‘The hen can hatch her eggs because
her heart is always listening.’ That is an important magic spell. The hen can
hatch the eggs because of the energy of heat. But the energy of the heat can
only warm the shells; it cannot penetrate into the interior. Therefore she
conducts this energy inward with her heart. This she does with her hearing.
In this way she concentrates her whole heart. When the heart penetrates, the
energy penetrates, and the chick receives the energy of the heat and begins
to live. Therefore a hen, even when at times she leaves her eggs, always has
the attitude of listening with bent ear. Thus the concentration of the spirit is
not interrupted. Because the concentration of the spirit is not interrupted.
But the concentration of the spirit suffers no interruption, neither does the
energy of heat suffer interruption day or night, and the spirit awakens to
life. The awakening of the spirit is accomplished because the heart has first
died. When a man can let his heart die, then the primal spirit wakes to life.
To kill the heart does not mean to let it dry and wither away, but it means
that it has become undivided and gathered into one.”
Author’s Commentary
I love the metaphor of the hen and understand it intuitively. Do I
imagine myself a hen while meditating? No, that’s nonsense. According to
Cleary, it’s a Chan Buddhist admonition about not losing focus. The goal
here is undivided attention.
CHAPTER 4 - PART 5 (CLEARY 14-21)
Wilhelm
“The Buddha said: “When you fix your heart on one point, then nothing
is impossible for you.” The heart easily runs away, so it is necessary to
concentrate it by means of breath-energy. Breath-energy easily becomes
rough, therefore it has to be refined by the heart. When that is done, can it
then happen that it is not fixed?
“The two mistakes of indolence and distraction must be combated by
quiet work that is carried on daily without interruption; then success will
certainly be achieved. If one is not seated in meditation, one will often be
distracted without noticing it. To become conscious of the distraction is the
mechanism by which to do away with distraction. Indolence of which a man
is conscious, and indolence of which he is unconscious, are a thousand
miles apart. Unconscious indolence is real indolence; conscious indolence
is not complete indolence, because there is still some clarity in it.
Distraction comes from letting the mind wander about; indolence comes
from letting the mind wander about; indolence comes from the mind’s not
yet being pure. Distraction is much easier to correct than indolence. It is as
in sickness: if one feels pains and irritations, one can help them with
remedies, but indolence is like a disease that is attended by lack of
realization. Distraction can be counteracted, confusion can be straightened
out, but indolence and lethargy are heavy and dark. Distraction and
confusion at least have a place, but in indolence and lethargy the anima
alone is active. In distraction the animus is still present, but in indolence
pure darkness rules. If one becomes sleepy during meditation, that is an
effect of indolence. Only breathing serves to overcome indolence. Although
the breath that flows in and out through the nose is not the true breath, the
flowing in and out of the true breath takes place in connection with it.”
Author’s Commentary
In my experience, everyone ends up with their own method of calming
the mind. A method either works or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, it’s a major
stumbling block for those who are unable to activate kundalini — they
cannot, no matter how hard they try, calm the mind.
Once again, Wilhelm inserts anima and animus. Don’t let these terms
distract you; they point to the difficulty in achieving awareness, which are
to be forgiven in the beginning, but if you are serious, you must make a
conscious effort to strive for. Everyone starts out with a certain lack of
discipline. After a while you learn that excuses are self-delusion. Awareness
is a means of combating illusion.
“Meditation is not a question of effort because all effort is going to
be through the mind, of the mind, by the mind. How can it take you
beyond the mind? You will go round and round IN the mind. You
have to wake up! Mind is sleep. Mind is a constant process of
dreaming, desiring, thoughts, memories.”
— OSHO
CHAPTER 4 - PART 6 (CLEARY 22-28)
Wilhelm
“While sitting, one must therefore always keep the heart quiet and the
energy concentrated. How can the heart be made quiet? By the breath. Only
the heart must be conscious of the flowing in and out of the breath; it must
not be heard with the ears. If it is not heard, then the breathing is light; if
light, it is pure. If it can be heard, then the breath-energy is rough; if rough,
then it is troubled; if it is troubled, then indolence and lethargy develop and
one wants to sleep. That is self-evident.
“How to use the heart correctly during breathing must be understood. It
is a use without use. One should only let the light fall quite gently on the
hearing. This sentence contains a secret meaning. What does it mean to let
the light fall? It is the spontaneous radiation of the light of the eyes. The eye
looks inward only and not outward. To sense brightness without looking
outward means to look inward. To sense brightness without looking
outward means to look inward; it has nothing to do with an actual looking
within. What does hearing mean? It is the spontaneous hearing of the light
of the ear. The ear listens inwardly only and does not listen to what is
outside. To sense brightness without listening to what is outside is to listen
inwardly; it has nothing to do with actually listening to what is within. In
this sort of hearing, one hears only that there is no sound; in this kind of
seeing, one sees only that no shape is there. If the eye is not looking
outward and the ear is not hearkening outward, they close themselves and
are inclined to sink inward. Only when one looks and hearkens inward does
the organ not go outward nor sink inward. In this way indolence and
lethargy are done away with. That is the union of the seed and the light of
the sun and moon.
“If, as a result of indolence, one becomes sleepy, one should stand up
and walk about. When the mind has become clear one should sit down
again. If there is time in the morning, one may sit during the burning of an
incense stick; that is the best. In the afternoon, human affairs interfere and
one can therefore easily fall into indolence. It is not necessary, however, to
have an incense stick. But one must lay aside all entanglements and sit quite
still for a time. In the course of time there will be success without one’s
becoming indolent and falling asleep.”
Author’s Commentary
There’s nothing new in the first two sections of this paragraph, except to
mention that many people I’ve taught confess not only to falling asleep,
nodding off, yawning, letting the mind wander, but also to bad lifestyle
habits such as, missing days, drinking and doping, masturbating, etc. The
mind is mostly helpless in eliminating these diversions. What really helps is
feedback from the body — in the form of newly experienced sensations —
that prove something is happening. But you won’t get feedback until you
start making progress, and you won’t progress until you eliminate insolence
and distraction. As the text points out, being aware of indolence is part of
the elimination process. But the greater part for me was gradually becoming
more disciplined — no self-destructive lifestyle habits. When this occurred,
it became easier to focus on the breathing. Why? Because I wasn’t always
thinking about what I might be missing of doing. I understood what it
meant to “fix your heart on one point.”
“Confusion is there for a reason. In certainty, there is no growth.
The spiritual journey is all about trusting a force or energy that has
your best interests at heart, and then letting go.” 4
The last paragraph in this section deals with scheduling, which, in turn,
depends on energy flows throughout the day. I find that mornings are better
for meditation, up to the energy awakening. Once kundalini was awakened,
however, and It stared to do me, I found that the energy peaked at around
5:00 PM (17h00). That’s when I lie down and let the energy surge through
me.
9
V - MISTAKES DURING THE CIRCUL ATION OF
THE LIGHT
E R ROR S IN TU R N ING TH E LIG H T A ROU N D - CLE A RY
“These conditions are recognized only when they have been
personally experienced.”
I
n this chapter Cleary criticizes both Wilhelm and Jung for their
ignorance of all things Buddhist and Taoist, even opinionating that
Jung “never followed the directions of the Golden Flower (which may
be just as well considering the quality of the translation), nevertheless it is
tempting to speculate on what would have happened had there been an
accurate version of the text available to him.” 1
For this reason I feel obligated to cross check Cleary’s observations
with mine as well as with Jung’s and Wilhelm’s. I might add that in spite of
Cleary’s trashing of the translation, I used the Wilhelm version to awaken
kundalini successfully and permanently.
CHAPTER 5 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-2)
Wilhelm
“Master Lu-tsu said, Your work will gradually become concentrated and
mature, but before you reach the condition in which you sit like a withered
tree before a cliff, there are still many possibilities of error which I would
like to bring to your special attention. These conditions are recognized only
when they have been personally experienced. I shall enumerate them here.
My school differs from the Buddhist yoga school (Chan-tsung) in that it has
confirmatory signs for each step of the way. First I would like to speak of
the mistakes and then of the confirmatory signs.”
Author’s Commentary
“These conditions are recognized only when they have been personally
experienced” is the operative theme of this section and really applies to the
book as a whole. Cleary translates it as “Only when you have personally
gotten this far do you know how I can talk of it now.” Not so far apart in
meaning as Cleary would have the reader believe.
In the rest of the section, Cleary concludes that Wilhelm’s metaphors
are potentially misleading. For instance, he states that the “withered tree”
condition might mislead the reader into thinking that sitting like a withered
tree before a cliff is the goal of the meditation. That’s not an unreasonable
conclusion in and of itself, however, I tended to take these images with a
grain of salt and skip over them literally. If they had figurative meaning, I
reasoned, I would discover it via the meditation. Otherwise, dwelling too
long on metaphors and similes is a waste of time. The reader needs to be
aware that only those teachings related to actual meditation are useful to the
practitioner. Figurative references are absorbed as they are personally
experienced.
CHAPTER 5 - PART 2 (CLEARY 3-6)
Wilhelm
“When one begins to carry out one’s decision, care must be taken so
that everything can proceed in a comfortable, relaxed manner. Too much
must not be demanded of the heart. One must be careful that, quite
automatically, heart and energy are coordinated. Only then can a state of
quietness be attained. During this quiet state the right conditions and the
right space must be provided. One must not sit down [to meditate] in the
midst of frivolous affairs. That is to say, the mind must be free of vain
preoccupations. All entanglements must be put aside; one must be detached
and independent. Nor must the thoughts be concentrated upon the right
procedure. This danger arises if too much trouble is taken. I do not mean
that no trouble is to be taken, but the correct way lies in keeping equal
distance between being and not being. If one can attain purposelessness
through purpose, then the thing has been grasped. Now one can let oneself
go, detached and without confusion, in an independent way.”
Author’s Commentary
Once again Cleary picks on Wilhelm for his lack of Taoist and Buddhist
purity. “This another caution against quietism or nihilism; “letting go” is
not to be exaggerated into oblivion. This is akin to micromanaging and
over-coaching. The practitioner needs to trust the body and the counting, so
that he/she can find a happy medium without meditation whisperers
overusing terms like neutral voidness. If terms are helpful, great, but too
much quibbling over exactly what a term like neutral voidness actually
means steers the practitioner away from self-learning and praxis.
Cleary says the passage does warn against “projecting” simulative
outcomes, which he rightfully claims provides an opening for the mind to
start daydreaming and losing the meditative state and the “center”
altogether.
CHAPTER 5 - PART 3 (CLEARY 7)
Wilhelm
“Furthermore, one must not fall victim to the ensnaring world. The
ensnaring world is where the five kinds of dark demons disport themselves.
This is the case, for example, when, after fixation, one has chiefly thoughts
of dry wood and dead ashes, and few thoughts of the bright spring on the
great earth. In this way one sinks into the world of the dark. The energy is
cold there, breathing is rough, and many images of coldness and decay
present themselves. If one tarries there long, one enters the world of plants
and stones.”
Author’s Commentary
As for Wilhelm’s entering “the world of plants and stones,” Cleary uses
“you will degenerate into a blockhead or a rockhead.” In practical terms,
there are some moments when the meditation isn’t happening, in which
case, it’s better to stop and start again later. Forty-five minutes can make all
the difference. In any case, Wilhelm and Cleary seem to have been working
from different texts. So if Wilhelm is guilty of inventing his own
metaphors, which mislead the practitioner, how is it that I was successful? It
has to be because once I was able to locate and slip into the center at will,
metaphorical purity didn’t matter.
In his notes Cleary states, “Although Jung admits he never followed the
directions of the Golden Flower (which may have been just as well
considering the quality of the translation), nevertheless it is tempting to
speculate on what would have happened had there been an accurate version
of the text available to him.”
As a practical matter, I made it to the ultimate event using — according
to Cleary — an inaccurate version of the text. It must mean there’s either a
lot of tolerance in the way the meditation is performed or I was extremely
lucky. In any case, as my practice developed, my theoretical understanding
caught up with it and I learned to avoid time-wasting ensnarements, be they
fantasies or “loose ends.”
CHAPTER 5 - PART 4 (CLEARY 8-10)
Wilhelm
“Nor must a man be led astray by the ten thousand ensnarements. This
happens if, after the quiet state has begun, one after another all sorts of ties
suddenly appear. One wants to break through them and cannot; one follows
them, and feels as if relieved by this. This means the master has become the
servant. If a man tarries in this stage long, he enters world of illusory
desires.
“At best, one finds oneself in heaven, at the worst, among the foxspirits. Such a fox-spirit, it is true, may be able to roam in the famous
mountains enjoying the wind and the moon, the flowers and fruits, and
taking his pleasure in coral trees and jeweled grass. But after having done
this for three to five hundred years, or at the most for a couple of thousand
years, his reward is over and he is born again into the world of turmoil.
“All of these are wrong paths. When a man knows the wrong paths, he
can then inquire into the confirmatory signs.”
Author’s Commentary
In his comments, Cleary states, “People who enter into contemplative
practices without this sort of theoretical preparation are easily deluded by
unusual psychic experiences.”
In Wilhelm’s footnotes to this chapter, note a similar bent : “The
purpose of this section is to call attention to the wrong paths while
meditating so that one enters the space of energy instead of the cave of
fantasy.”
These are very accurate statements, whose correctness I observe almost
everyday in pratical consultations with younger initiates, who are prone to
fantasies. Not only are they fantasy-prone, they refuse to question the
authenticity of their visions. And to a point I understand why. Could it be
due to the prevalence of leisure time and drug use in developed countries
and the fantasies these stimulants induce? It’s a short hop from acid and
meth machinations to the notion that meditation is a kind of holdover
pattern capable of producing the same effects.
As for Wilhelm and Cleary, could this mean that they actually agree for
once?
10
VI – CONFIRMATORY EXPERIENCES DURING
THE CIRCUL ATION OF THE LIGHT
AU TH E N TICATING E XP E R IE NCE S OF TU R N ING TH E
LIG H T A ROU N D – CLE A RY
CHAPTER 6 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1)
“M
WILHELM
aster Lu-tsu said, There are many kinds of confirmatory
experiences. One must not content oneself with small
demands but must rise to the thought that all living
creatures have to be redeemed. One must not be trivial and irresponsible in
heart, but must strive to make deeds prove one’s words.”
Author’s Commentary
At first, I thought Cleary makes some good points in his attack on
Wilhelm’s translation and Jung’s arrogance, but after reading his notes on
this passage, I find it needlessly excessive because both are saying that a
person should be aware of the collective significance of undertaking
kundalini.
CHAPTER 6 - PART 2 (CLEARY 2-3)
Wilhelm
“If, when there is quiet, the spirit has continuously and uninterruptedly a
sense of great joy as if intoxicated or freshly bathed, it is a sign that the
light-principle is harmonious in the whole body; then the Golden Flower
begins to bud. When, furthermore, all openings are quiet, and the silver
moon stands in the middle of heaven, and one has the feeling that this great
earth is a world of light and brightness, that is a sign that the body of the
heart opens itself to clarity. It is a sign that the Golden Flower is opening.”
Author’s Commentary
In my case, the effects I began to feel as kundalini awakened were not
the same as the ones cited in this chapter. This has been corroborated after
many interviews and consultations with others. No two people, much less
every last person, experiences kundalini in the same manner. Once it
became active for me, I did feel a euphoria at knowing that I was
undergoing a change in being.
Here Cleary cites some flowery references to Taoist texts. If they
resonates with you, so much the better, but I never came back to this
chapter after a few readings.
CHAPTER 6 - PART 3 (CLEARY 4-5)
This section includes inconsistencies in one-to-one text equivalencies
between Wilhelm and Cleary and they are noted where they occur.
Wilhelm
“Furthermore, the whole body feels strong and firm so that it fears
neither storm not frost. Things by which other men are displeased, when I
meet them, cannot becloud the brightness of the seed of the spirit. Yellow
gold fills the house; the steps are of white jade. Rotten and stinking things
on earth that come in contact with one breath of the true energy will
immediately live again. Red blood becomes milk. The fragile body of the
flesh is sheer gold and diamonds. That is a sign that the Golden Flower is
crystallized.
“The Book of Successful Contemplation (Ying-kuan-ching) says: ‘The
sun sinks in the great water and magic pictures of trees in rows arise.’ The
setting of the sun means that in chaos (in the world before phenomena, that
is before the intelligible world) the foundation is laid: that is the nonpolarized condition [ultimateless](wu-chi). Highest good is like water, pure
and spotless. It is the ruler of the great polarity, the god who appears in the
trigram of shock, Chen. Chen is also symbolized by wood, and so the image
of trees in rows appears. A sevenfold row of trees means the light of the
seven body-openings (or heart-openings). The northwest is the direction of
the Creative. When it moves on one place further, the Abysmal is there. The
sun which sinks on one place further, the Abysmal is there. The sun which
sinks into the great water is the image for the Creative and the Abysmal.
The Abysmal is the direction of midnight (mouse, tzu, north). At the winter
solstice, thunder (Chen) is in the middle of the earth quite hidden and
covered up. Only when the trigram Chen is reached does the light-pole
appear over the earth again. That is the image represented by the rows of
trees. The rest can be correspondingly inferred.” 1
Author’s Commentary
The notion of “change of being” continues here, as the newly awakened
adept quickly develops a greater sense of awareness. Not only a sensory
awareness, but an extrasensory consciousness, as well.
According to Cleary, “Red blood becomes milk” is a metaphor for the
lessening of sexual appetite, as kundalini activity in the brain needs the
constant infusion of sublimated energy. This is an important concept.
CHAPTER 6 - PART 4 (CLEARY 6-10)
Wilhelm
“The second part means the building of the foundation on this. The
great world is like ice, a glassy jewel-world. The brilliancy of the light
gradually crystallizes. Hence a great terrace arises and upon it, in the course
of time, the Buddha appears. When the gold being appears who should it be
but the Buddha? For the Buddha is the golden holy man of the great
enlightenment. This is a great confirmatory experience.
“Now there are three confirmatory experiences which can be tested. The
first is that, when one has entered the state of meditation, the gods are in the
valley. Men are heard talking as though at a distance of several hundred
paces, each one quite clear. But the sounds are all like an echo in a valley.
One can always hear them, but never oneself. This is called the presence of
the gods in the valley.
“At times the following can be experiences: as soon as one is quiet, the
light of the eyes begins to blaze up, so that everything before one becomes
quite bright as if one were in a cloud. If one opens one’s eyes and seeks the
body, it is not to be found any more. This is called: ‘In the empty chamber it
grows light.’ Inside and outside, everything is equally light. That is a very
favorable sign.”
Author’s Commentary
The “second part” is a continuation of the previous section and refers to
the trigram at the bottom of Wilhelm’s page 49, which by inference is the
“first part.”
The subject quickly transitions to visions of the Buddha, which Cleary
then quotes from another source, “When you see Buddha, you are seeing
your own mind; for mind is Buddha, mind makes Buddha.” Here again, I
suggest that these visions in each case are subjective. Since I was able to
“see inside esoteric, but real components of my physical brain, at work,” as
opposed to abstract visual constructs, I move to make subjectivity
unanimous.
The remaining parts 7-10 of Cleary’s translation refer to Taoist and
Buddhist theory and Wilhelm’s misconstruction of same as well as Cleary’s
notions of what Jung must have been thinking and understanding.
About the only part that resonates for me is the notion of ascending
during meditation. This is a sensation and a feeling that many others beside
myself have witnessed. As Wilhelm expresses it, “It seems difficult to
remain sitting; one feels as if drawn upward.”
CHAPTER 6 - PART 5 (CLEARY 11-13)
These sections are missing in Wilhelm; I guess he gave up on dealing with
the references.
11
VII – THE LIVING MANNER OF THE
CIRCUL ATION OF THE LIGHT
TH E LIVING ME THOD OF TU R N ING TH E LIG H T
A ROU N D – CLE A RY
CHAPTER 7 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-4)
“M
WILHELM
aster Lu-tsu said, When there is a gradual success in
producing the circulation of the light, a man must not
give up his ordinary occupation in doing it. The ancients
said, When occupations come to us, we must accept them; when things
come to us, we must understand them from the ground up. If the
occupations are properly handled by correct thoughts, the light is not
scattered by outside things, but circulates according to its own law. Even
the still invisible circulation of the light get started this way; how much
more, then, is it the case with the true circulation of the light which has
already manifested itself clearly.
“When in ordinary life one has the ability always to react to things by
reflexes only, without any admixture of a thought of others or of oneself,
that is a circulation of the light arising out of circumstances. This is the first
secret.
“If, early in the morning, one can rid oneself of all entanglements and
meditate from one to two double hours, and then can orientate oneself all
activities and outside things in a purely objective, reflex way, and if this can
be continued without any interruption, then after two or three months all the
perfected ones come from heaven and approve such behavior.”
Author’s Commentary
I like the notion of “not give up his ordinary occupation in doing it.” It’s
what I resolved to do as soon as I was able. In Deciphering the Golden
Flower One Secret at a Time, you’ll see it took me a while to become
operational.
I never returned to film editing, but slowly began a writing career, first
as a technical writer, next in nonfiction. Nevertheless, I became productive
as soon as possible; any delays were induced by the physiological
adjustments kundalini had to make and the need to rest while these
adjustments were underway. The energy was doing me, sometimes quite
strenuously, and I needed to let the reengineering and rebuilding happen
according to kundalini’s timetable and plan. This may be difficult for the
beginner to understand and that’s why it should not be taken lightly. Yes,
kundalini has a plan for your being and you best let it take its course.
Cleary points out, “’Turning the light around wherever you are’ is
translated by Wilhelm as ‘circulation of the light arising out of
circumstances.’ This small misreading of the words is greatly misleading if
it means that practice depends on circumstances.” In this instance, as in
many others, Cleary clarifies the Chinese meaning. If, as I stated previously,
this interferes with the actual purpose of the teachings, i.e., activating
kundalini, I’d have to say it didn’t affect my practice.
Although I don’t include the notes to Wilhelm’s text, in this instance, I
acknowledge the clarity the final sentence brings to this chapter. “The living
manner of the circulation of the light has just this meaning: to live mingling
with the world and yet in harmony with the light.”
12
VIII – A MAGIC SPELL FOR THE FAR JOURNEY
TH E S E CR E T OF F R E E D OM – CLE A RY
CHAPTER 8 - PART 1 (CLEARY 1-2)
WILHELM
Master Lu-tsu said, Yu Ch’ing has left behind him a magic
spell for the far journey:
Four words crystallize the spirit in the space of energy.
In the sixth month white snow is suddenly seen to fly.
At the third watch the sun’s disk sends out blinding rays.
In the water blows the wind of the Gentle.
Wandering in heaven, one eats the spirit-energy of the
Receptive.
And the still deeper secret of the secret:
The land that is nowhere, that is the true home...
These verses are full of mystery.
A
uthor’s Commentary
As we progress through the text, the frequency of symbolism
and abstraction increases. I was able to appreciate these verses as
poetry, but they did nothing to clarify the actual concrete steps in applying
the GFM method.
Cleary quarrels with Wilhelm’s exotic translation of the title of this
passage, calling it “weird and superstitious.” He tells us rightly that, “Then
again, it was not unusual for people of his time to expect Eastern ideas to be
exotic and mysterious.” 1
He goes on to deconstruct his attack on Wilhelm, “The word translated
as ‘magic spell’ actually means a spoken teaching, or a secret teaching. It
also comes to mean ‘secret’ in the everyday how-to sense of what is
essential for success in accomplishing something.”
I don’t see much difference between Cleary’s ultimate breakdown of the
passage and Wilhelm’s translation. That his translation is esoteric is
accurate, but is Cleary’s any less?
CHAPTER 8 - PART 2 (CLEARY 3-6)
Wilhelm
“The meaning is: The most important things in the great Tao are the
words: action through non-action. Non-action prevents a man from
becoming entangled in form and image (materiality). Action in non-action
prevents a man from sinking into numbing emptiness and dead nothingness.
The effect depends entirely on the central One; the releasing of the effect is
in the two eyes. The two eyes are like the pole of the Great Wain which
turns the whole of creation; they cause the poles of light and darkness to
circulate. The Elixir depends from beginning to end on one thing: the metal
in the midst of the water, that is, the lead in the water-region. Heretofore we
have spoken of the circulation of the light, indicating thereby the initial
release which works from without upon what lies within. This is to aid one
in obtaining the Master. It is for pupils in the beginning stages. They go
through the two lower transitions in order to gain the upper one. After the
sequence of events is clear and the nature of the release is known, heaven
no longer withholds the Way, but reveals the ultimate truth. Disciples, keep
it secret and redouble your effort!”
Author’s Commentary
I may have approached the key term “action through non-action”
incorrectly, Cleary tells us I must have. However, there came a time when it
didn’t matter. Cleary translates it as “to act purposefully without striving.” I
took action through non-action to mean the more my breathing became
regular and silent (non-action) — no matter how much air I took in the
sooner some inner activity would start to occur (action), i.e., complete
stillness would precipitate energy events in my body. Which is ultimately
what happened. So, was I doing it correctly or missing the point?
Here, I understand Wilhelm better than I do Cleary, whose translation is
more Zen like in its perspective, whereas Wilhelm’s — at least, my
understanding of it — focused me on correct breathing practices. I’d trade
concrete instructions for abstraction any day.
CHAPTER 8 - PART 3 (CLEARY 7-14)
Wilhelm
“The circulation of the light is the inclusive term. The further the work
advances, the more does the Golden Flower bloom. But there is a still more
marvelous kind of circulation. Till now we have worked from the outside
on what is within; now we stay in the center and rule what is external.
Hitherto it was a service in aid of the Master; now it is a dissemination of
the commands of the Master. The whole relationship is now reversed. If one
wants to penetrate the more subtle regions by this method, one must first
see to it that body and heart are completely controlled, that one is quite free
and at peace, letting go of all entanglements, untroubled by the slightest
excitement, and with the heavenly heart exactly in the middle. Then let one
lower the lids of the two eyes as if one received a holy edict, a summons to
come before the minister. Who would dare disobey? Then with both eyes
one illumines the house of the Abysmal (water, K’an). Wherever the
Golden Flower goes, the true light of polarity comes forth to meet it. The
Clinging (brightness, Li) is bright outside and dark within; this is the body
of the Creative. The one dark [line] enters and becomes master. The result is
that the heart (consciousness) develops in dependence on things, is directed
outward, and is tossed about on the stream. When the rotating light shines
towards what is within, it does not develop in dependence on things, the
energy of the dark is fixed, and the Golden Flower shines concentratedly.
This is then the collected light of polarity. Related things attract each other.
Thus the polarized light-line of the Abysmal presses upward. It is not only
the light in the abyss, but it is creative light which meets creative light. As
soon as these two substances meet each other, they unite inseparably, and
there develops an unceasing life; it comes and goes, rises and falls of itself,
in the house of the primal energy. One is aware of effulgence and infinity.
The whole body feels light and would like to fly. This is the state of which
it is said: Clouds fill the thousand mountains. Gradually it goes to and fro
quite softly; it rises and falls imperceptibly. The pulse stands still and
breathing stops. This is the moment of true creative union, the state of
which it is said: The moon gathers up the ten thousand waters. In the midst
of this darkness, the heavenly heart suddenly begins a movement. This is
the return of the one light, the time when the child comes to life.
“However, the details of this must be carefully explained.”
Author’s Commentary
This passage is an explanation of ontological actuality — the process of
spiritual rebirth and childbirth all rolled into one.
Till now we have worked from the outside on what is within means the
work starts with a search, which leads to a practice, which moves from the
outer learning and practice of techniques to inner events, which if
successfully mastered, allows control to pass from the outside to the inside
as kundalini installs its programs: now we stay in the center and rule what
is external.
Here we meet up once again with the Primal Spirit; that’s what the
phrase with the heavenly heart exactly in the middle refers to, “heavenly
heart” being another synonym for Primal Spirit. The energy cultivation
techniques — the deep breathing, the control of heart rate, the backwardflowing method — release the Primal Spirit from its dormant state.
The author advises us to put aside distractions, that it is much easier to
practice energy cultivation in conditions of solitude and quiet — the solitary
path.
There’s a quick review of the techniques, lowering the eyelids and the
need to focus inward on the center.
The rest describes the results from the author’s point of view or
experience. If you succeed in mastering the method, will your experience
resemble the author’s? I doubt it; in my 40 years of talking with kundalini
adepts and initiates, rarely does one experience resemble another. There are
similarities, however.
CHAPTER 8 - PART 4 (CLEARY 15-50)
Cleary’s comments on Verse 9 begins with the following admonition: “This
section of the text, particularly from this passage onward, is more thickly
veiled than ever in the garb of Taoist alchemical language.”
Nevertheless, I included comments on Verses 9-14 in the previous
section as a kind of review, ever conscious at the time, that we were
plunging deeper and deeper into jargon specific to Taoist dogma, doctrine,
and belief sets.
Inn keeping with the original purposes of this book, I’ll lump the rest
(Verses 15-50) into one section, in order to consecrate more time to the
actual modernized version of the method as well as a comparison of Golden
Flower Meditation with the Microcosmic Orbit, a popular and widely
practiced method that enjoys many similarities with GFM.
Wilhelm
“When a person looks at something, listens to something, eyes and ears
move and follow the things until they have passed. These movements are all
underlings, and when the heavenly ruler follows them in their task it means:
to live together with demons.
“If now, during every movement of rest, a person lives together with
people and not with demons, then the heavenly ruler is the true man. When
he moves, and we move with him, then the movement is the root of heaven.
When he is quiet, and we are quiet with him, then this quietness is the cave
of the moon. When he unceasingly alternates movement and rest, go on
with him unceasingly in movement and quietness. When he rises and falls
with inhaling and exhaling, rise and fall with him. That is what is called
going to and fro between the root of heaven and the cave of the moon.
“When the heavenly heart still preserves calm, movement before the
right time is a fault of softness. When the heavenly heart has already
moved, the movement that follows afterwards, in order to correspond with
it, is a fault of rigidity. As soon as the heavenly heart is stirring, one must
immediately mount upward whole-heartedly to the house of the Creative.
Thus the spirit-light sees the summit; this is the leader. This movement is in
accord with the time. The heavenly heart rises to the summit of the
Creative, where it expands in complete freedom. Then suddenly it demands
the deepest silence, and one must lead it speedily and whole-heartedly into
the yellow castle; thus the eyes behold the central yellow dwelling place of
the spirit.
“When the desire for silence comes, not a single thought arises; he who
is looking inward suddenly forgets that he is looking. At this time, body and
heart must be left completely released. All entanglements have disappeared
without trace. Then I no longer know at what place the house of my spirit
and my crucible are. If a man wants to make certain of his body, he cannot
get at it. This condition is the penetration of heaven into earth, the time
when all wonders return to their roots. So it is when the crystallized spirit
goes into the space of energy.
“The One is the circulation of the light. When one begins, it is at first
still scattered and one wants to collect it; the six senses are not active. This
is the cultivation and nourishment of one’s own origin, the filling up of the
oil when one goes to receive life. When one is far enough to have gathered
it, one feels light and free and need not take the least trouble. This is the
quieting of the spirit in the space of the ancestors, the taking possession of
former heaven.
“When one is so far advanced that every shadow and every echo has
disappeared, so that one is entirely quiet and firm, this is refuge within the
cave of energy, where all that is miraculous returns to its roots. One does
not alter the place, but the place divides itself. This is incorporeal space
where a thousand and ten thousand places are one place. One does not alter
the time, but the time divides itself. This is immeasurable time when all the
aeons are like a moment.
“As long as the heart has not attained absolute tranquility, it cannot
move itself. One moves the movement and forgets the movement; this is not
movement in itself. Therefore it is said: If, when stimulated by external
things, one moves, it is the impulse of the being. If, when not stimulated by
external things, one moves, it is the movement of heaven. The being that is
placed over against heaven can fall and come under the domination of the
impulses. The impulses are based upon the fact that there are external
things. They are thoughts that goon beyond one’s own position. Then
movement leads to movement. But when no idea arises, the right ideas
come. That is the true idea. When things are quiet and one is quite firm, and
the release of heaven suddenly moves, is this not a movement without
purpose? Action through non-action has just this meaning.
“As to the poem at the beginning, the two first lines refer entirely to the
activity of the Golden Flower. The two next lines are concerned with the
mutual interpenetration of sun and moon. The sixth month is the Clinging
(Li, fire). The white snow that flies is the true polar darkness in the middle
of the fire trigram, that is about to turn into the Receptive. The third watch
is the Abysmal (K’an, water). The sun’s disk is the one polar line in te
trigram for water, which is about to turn into the Creative. This contains the
way to take the trigram for the Abysmal and the way to reverse the trigram
for the Clinging (fire, Li).
“The following two lines have to do with the activity of the pole of the
Great Wain, the rise and fall of the whole release of polarity. Water is the
trigram of the Abysmal; the eye is the wind of the Gentle (Sun). The light
of the eyes illumines the house of the Abysmal, and controls there the seed
of the great light. ‘In heaven’ means the house of the Creative (Ch’ien).
‘Wandering in heaven, one eats the spirit-energy of the Receptive.’ This
shows how the spirit penetrates the energy, how heaven penetrates the earth;
this happens so that the fire can be nourished.
“Finally, the two last lines point to the deepest secret, which cannot be
dispensed with from the beginning to the end. This is the washing of the
heart and the purification of the thoughts; this is the bath. The holy science
takes as a beginning the knowledge of where to stop, and as an end,
stopping at the highest good. Its beginning is beyond polarity.
“The Buddha speaks of the transient, the creator of consciousness, as
being the fundamental truth of religion. And the whole work of completing
life and human nature in our Taoism lies in the expression "to bring about
emptiness". All three religions agree in the one proposition, the finding of
the spiritual Elixir in order to pass from death to life. In what does this
spiritual Elixir consist? It means forever dwelling in purposelessness. The
deepest secret of the bath that is to be found in our teaching is thus confined
to the work of making the heart empty. Therewith the matter is settled.
What I have revealed here in a word is the fruit of a decade of effort.
“If you are not yet clear as to how far all three sections can be present in
one section, I will make it clear to you through the threefold Buddhist
contemplation of emptiness, delusion, and the center.
“Emptiness comes as the first of the three contemplations. All things are
looked upon as empty. Then follows delusion. Although it is known that
they are empty, things are not destroyed, but one attends to one’s affairs in
the midst of the emptiness. But though one does not destroy things, neither
does one pay attention to them; this is contemplation of the center. While
practicing contemplation of the empty, one also knows that one cannot
destroy the ten thousand things, and still one does not notice them. In this
way the three contemplations fall together. But after all, strength is in
envisioning the empty. Therefore, when one practices contemplation of
emptiness, emptiness is certainly empty, but delusion is empty too. Being
on the way of the center, one also creates images of the emptiness; they are
not called empty, but are called central. One practices also contemplation of
delusion, but one does not call it delusion, one calls it central. As to what
has to do with the center, more need not be said.”
Author’s Commentary
As stated throughout the book, symbolism is useful for scholarly
purposes, but for the kundalini meditation teachings in the SGF it must take
a back seat. If you have to dig into this material, I refer you to Cleary’s
notes. He goes all the way to the end, Chapter 13, and insists his translation
is more faithful to the original than Wilhelm’s.
If you want to save time, learn and practice the method. When you
master it, you’ll awaken kundalini and little-by-little the ontological
abstractions in the text will reveal themselves to you.
In the following section, you’ll find my attempt to modernize GFM for
primetime. As always, less is more. Or, the more you practice, the less
you’ll be tempted to nitpick over terminology.
IV
T h e G old e n F lowe r Me d it a t io n Me t h o d
“The ultimate aim of meditation is to become more and more
conscious. Enlightenment, therefore, is becoming fully conscious.”
— JJ SEMPLE
13
KUNDALINI MEDITATION MODERNIZED FOR
PRIMETIME
T
here appear to be several schools of thought as to the real
meaning and purpose of the SGF. Is it a manual for energy
cultivation? Or is it some kind of philosophical cud to be chewed
but never digested?
Practiced and refined in the laboratory of my body, I am little concerned
with those who deem this method a program of psycho self-analysis, as if
palpable elements like seed energy, chakras, elixir, meridians, nadis didn’t
exist. Its purpose is initiating the sexual sublimation process, thereby
raising kundalini: It says so in the text, not once, but over and over:
“If, in the moment of release, it is not allowed to flow outward, but
is led back by the energy of thought so that it penetrates the crucible
of the Creative, and refreshes heart and body and nourishes them,
that is also the backward-flowing method.” 1
Golden Flower Meditation uses the nervous and respiratory systems to
trigger a host of metabolic and somatic activity in the human body,
especially in the internal organs. Through Golden Flower Meditation, the
nervous system is stimulated such that the natural chemical substances of
the body are recombined and used for self-healing, rejuvenative purposes,
and greater overall awareness. But it all starts with breathing … Read the
report by an individual who practiced GFM for 100-days.
The purpose of Golden Flower Meditation (GFM) is to activate
Kundalini in a safe, deliberate, permanent fashion. It’s repeatable in the
sense that anyone who apples the method correctly can obtain the same
results I and the ancient Eastern masters did in the past. How do you know
if you’re capable of activating Kundalini? You don’t, and that’s why you
should read up on it before charging ahead recklessly. It’s not something to
be toyed with.
The method is divided into three phases, illustrated in the animation on
this page and on the Deep Breathing page. GFM is a series of interlocking
dependencies that need to be practiced in order. You can’t skip around; you
must master the breathing techniques first. The three phases are meant to
help you understand the process conceptually as a whole.
Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing
Control of Heart Rate
The Backward-Flowing Method
Before you begin Golden Flower Kundalini Meditation, you must
master diaphragmatic breathing in order to train the diaphragm to regulate
and refine the breath and to center yourself. Since we cannot control or
even isolate the muscles of the diaphragm directly, we must find a “handle”
that allows us to do so indirectly. That handle is the belly or abdominal
muscles.
The Secret of the Golden Flower says:
“One should not be able to hear with the ear the outgoing and the
intaking of breath. What one hears is that it has no tone. As soon as
it has tone, the breathing is rough and superficial, and does not
penetrate into the open. The heart must be made quite light and
insignificant. The more it is released, the less it becomes; the less it
is, the quieter. All at once it becomes so quiet that it stops. Then the
true breathing is manifested and the form of the heart comes to
consciousness. If the heart is light, the breathing is light for every
movement of the heart affects breath-energy. If breathing is light,
the heart is light, for every movement of breath-energy affects the
heart. In order to steady the heart, one begins by taking care of the
breath energy. The heart cannot be influenced directly. Therefore,
the breath energy is used as a handle, and this is what is called
maintenance of the concentrated breath-energy.”
14
DIAPHRAGMATIC DEEP BREATHING (DDB)
W
hen you extend the belly, pushing it outward on inhalation
and then pulling the belly in to expel air, you are embarking
on a regimen of abdominal and diaphragmatic calisthenics.
Starting this activity for the first time — whether sitting, walking, reclining,
or lying down — you may feel a burning sensation. That is the muscles of
the abdomen telling you that you are beginning to breathe correctly. Using
the belly muscles is like pump priming, that is, using the handle of a pump
(the belly) to activate the pump mechanism (the diaphragm).
Long-time contributor Tom S. Kinney suggests this variation:
“A complete cycle starts with the exhalation. You use the thumb and
ring fingers to close the nostrils. I am right handed so I close the
right nostril with the thumb. Exhale through the left nostril. Hold the
breath out. Close the left nostril and breathe in. Hold the breath in.
Breathe out the right nostril, and hold the breath out. Then close the
right nostril and breathe in the left. This is a single round. The same
4:4:4:4 ratio works, or 4:2:4:2. If you skip the holding the breath out
you can try 4:4:4. The benefits I have experienced are improved
concentration and a temporary improvement in seeing parts of auras
around people — including in color. It helps to keep emotions
calmer. In general, colors are brighter and everything just seems a
little more vivid. I have read that it helps to balance the hemispheres
of the brain. Bill Harris (Holosync, Centerpointe) suggests it for that
purpose. I tend to start getting results in a week or two, and I have
been thinking of making time for it every day to see how it develops
more long term.
“For people who are already doing the technique described at
this web site, the 4:4:4:4 ratio is already familiar. It includes holding
the breath in and out. The only new part is switching sides. As for
which fingers to use to block the nostrils, it does vary from source to
source. I read thumb and ring finger. Start with an exhalation and
switch sides. Then inhale, exhale, and switch back to the original
side for another exhalation. It is harder to describe and keep it clear
with the holds also. With a lot of breathing patterns in Yoga, the
exhalation is more important than the inhalation.”
When you’ve mastered the diaphragmatic breathing skill, you will be
able to take in more air during each breath cycle. How does this work?
Shallow breathing merely fills the chest. Deep breathing fills the lungs, the
diaphragm, the belly, even the pockets behind the kidneys. With
diaphragmatic breathing, you not only take in more air, you slow down the
inhalation-exhalation cycle to the point where breathing becomes entirely
silent. In fact, eventually, you become one with your breathing. It’s as if
you’ve filled the room with your being. Suddenly, there are no walls; you
and the universe are in complete vibrational sync with your breath. This is a
profound experience that demonstrates that you are connected to the energy
continuum. Don’t try to force it; let it come to you.
15
CON TROL OF HEART RATE
Y
ou cannot influence or control the heart rate directly; it is an
autonomic function. So, once again, you use a “handle” to
accomplish it — the diaphragmatic deep breathing, explained
above, which, once you master it, makes your breathing more profound and
more regular. What do I mean by more profound and regular? Profound
means still, as in silent; regular means rhythmic.
The Secret of the Golden Flower says, “Only the heart must be
conscious of the flowing in and out of the breath; it must not be heard with
the ears.” Like the diaphragm, the heart is a muscle we cannot isolate or
control directly. Once again, you use a “handle” to control an autonomic
function, in this case, the heart. As The Secret of the Golden Flower says,
“The heart cannot be influenced directly. Therefore, the breath-energy is
used as a handle.”
The goal is to be able to sit in a quiet room and not detect the sound of
your breath while you meditate. As your practice progresses, you’ll observe
that you are able to take in more air at the same time your breathing rate
decreases (fewer breaths per minute) and you are no longer able to hear
your the sound of your breathing as you inhale and exhale.
The fewer breaths per minute; the slower your heart rate. This is a secret
yogis have known for centuries. No, you are not a turtle; there are too many
anatomical differences, but the more you control your metabolism, the
better able you are to start building up energy in the lower belly. What is
this energy? It’s the sexual sublimation process gradually engaging. Not
only does slowing your metabolism start distilling energy in the lower belly,
is also has longevity implications. All that remains to complete your
practice is to engage the backward-flowing method.
People who consult me on Kundalini ask, “Why bother with meditation
when you have aerobics, bodybuilding, and a host of other exercise
programs being offered at reasonable prices in strip malls across the
country?” Because Golden Flower Meditation is the only method that
doesn’t wear the body out. That’s right, whether you know it or not,
although exercise programs build the body up initially, over time they
actually wear it out at a much faster rate. Kundalini Meditation, on the other
hand, has the opposite effect; it actually rejuvenates and revitalizes the
body. The truth is Less is More!
“Internal exercises differ vastly from ‘external exercises’ and other
activities that primarily emphasize the external figure. The stress,
strain, pain, and contortions associated with external exercises
deplete the body of its energy and disturb the delicate biological
balance of the internal organs. This impairs the body’s ability to
fight off viruses and other disease causing agents, thereby causing
not only any number of illnesses, but also premature aging and
fatigue. Muscular bodies do not protect against disease-causing
agents; internal organs do.”
— THE BOOK OF INTERNAL EXERCISES - DR.
STEPHEN CHANG
16
T H E B A C K WA R D - F L O W I N G M E T H O D
H
ere’s how kundalini, and by extension, sexual sublimation,
works. At least, this is how it worked for me, once I discovered
how the backward-flowing method works. How do I know? I
observed the kundalini mechanism (its biological characteristics) in the
laboratory of my body. And that is with the sudden ability to detect an
energy buildup in the lower belly region. I use the word “region” because
the exact location is difficult to pinpoint. Others, who’ve succeeded with
the meditation confirm the energy buildup event, but also report having
difficulty pinpointing the exact location, probably due to anatomical and
metabolic differences. No matter. Kundalini activity begins with the energy
buildup — a result of the breathing exercises in Golden Flower Meditation
(GFM). What is this energy comprised of?
The composition of this energy for both males and females is sexual in
nature and substance. Semen and cervical fluids are distilled into psychic
fuel, often described as an essence or an elixir.
Once the energy buildup is detected, you can observe the psychic fuel
starting to climb the spine, using as yet unrecognized-by-medical-science
channels along the spine (consult your favorite esoteric source for detailed
channel information). This is the sexual sublimation phase, that is, the
distillation and redirection of sexual energy — normally used for
procreation — being diverted up the spine to the brain.
Once this psychic fuel reaches the brain, it’s like a coup d’etat. Acting
as a command and communications epicenter, kundalini takes over certain
biological and metabolic functions. Via the nervous system, kundalini sends
feelers throughout the body for the purpose of inventory, diagnosing the
status of cells, tissue, and organs — the complete anatomy, physiology,
histology, and embryology.
Kundalini compares the information received from each and every part,
system, and subsystem of the body with the master plan for your
embodiment, the blueprint for your being that came into existence just prior
to your conception. It then releases healing energy to those parts that need
it. Some of this healing work is accomplished immediately; some takes a lot
longer. The healing energy is also composed of sexual energy and is
summoned, as needed, by kundalini from the sexual apparatus and the
lymphatic nodes.
ABOUT THE BLUEPRINT
When kundalini awakened, I was able to see two separate bodies,
one, my actual physical form; the other, my intended form which lay
over my physical body like a template shroud. I knew it was there; I
knew it was perfect. I knew the physical body could be "stretched"
to fit this causal body, using it as a blueprint to restore my physical
body to its intended form. So how did I know it?
I wasn't able to get to the state that allowed me to perceive the
blueprint/aura until I had successfully mastered all steps of the GFM
method. Once I saw the blueprint, I realized it had always existed. It
was responsible for my earthly incarnation. How so?
When we say kundalini is dormant until activated in later life,
we imply that if it is sleeping, it must have been there all along. An
entity can't sleep unless it already exists. And that's the case with
kundalini. It's the life force (chi in Chinese, kundalini in Sanskrit).
In fact, it's as much a part of you as your flesh and bones. It created
them; that's what the life force does.
It's not only responsible for the blueprint of your being; it's
responsible for the formation of your embryo, for your fetus, for
your physical body up to the moment of birth, after which it works
in the background as Prana-Shakti, maintaining metabolic functions:
blood flow, cell division, digestion, like a vehicle that's idling. The
motor's on, but it's not going anywhere.
Up to the moment of your birth, it stays one step ahead of your
actual embodiment, carefully matching your anatomy to the threedimensional form as prescribed in your blueprint. At birth, this
metaphysical superintendence sleeps, allowing the physical factors
of heredity and environment to guide and manage your growth
through life.
Nevertheless, it's still there, waiting to be summoned from
slumber and once again, use its metaphysical, super-conscious
intelligence to guide your now capital 'B' Being to a more
illuminated state. From the moment it conceives your blueprint to
the moment of birth, and again, if awakened in later life, it's
Kundalini-Shakti, active in the foreground, creating. A vehicle,
shifting into gear, guiding you to higher realms.
If remedial metabolic, somatic, or anatomical work needs to take
place, the awakened kundalini is able to call forth and access your
original blueprint and use it as a pattern to restore your body to its
intended physiological state. 1
After my activation, I watched as my brain received information from
my body. How did this work? A particular node was touched, and like a
switch being thrown, I felt a click in the brain. Immediately after the click, a
corresponding body part received an influx of energy that either healed it or
made it expand. Every event was part of kundalini’s effort to synchronize
my actual body and being with the master blueprint. I say “effort” because
kundalini is intelligent; it knows what it’s doing. It has a plan and carries it
out. If it doesn’t accomplish all that it sets out to do, it’s either because:
The body is too far-gone, overtaken, most likely, by
degenerative disease. If it’s a neural impairment, kundalini is
usually able to heal it.
The kundalini awakening is not complete and permanent.
The activation method was involuntary — all the kundalini
components were not “installed” correctly.
In permanent awakenings, when all the components are correctly
installed, the command and communications epicenter not only has an
inventory component, it is able to dispense and release life force healing
energy, it increases consciousness over time, and it also includes a governor
that controls the precise amount of energy to release in a given
circumstance.
In temporary or involuntary cases, the governor is not always
completely operational and therefore releases either too much or too little
energy. Too much energy may lead to situations of pain, discomfort, or
other suffering. No one likes to see a person in agony, unhappy that
kundalini ever came into his or her life. At this stage, however, techniques
to relieve those suffering from neural pain or discomfort are not readily
available.
In most cases, kundalini gradually expands consciousness and fosters
anatomical, somatic, and metabolic improvements. It is even capable of
modifying an individual’s genetic profile and passing these beneficial
mutations along to future generations through DNA.
Step 1. Find Your Center
The method’s actual workflow is divided into six steps, detailed and
explained below.
To find your center, drop a plumb-line. This process is described in The
Secret of the Golden Flower thusly. “Looking at the tip of the nose serves
only as the beginning of concentration, so that the eyes are brought into the
right direction for looking, and then are held to the guide-line: after that one
can let it be. That is the way a mason hangs up a plumb-line. As soon as he
has hung it up, he guides his work by it without continually bothering
himself to look at the plumb-line.”
The idea behind centering is to use the “tip of the nose” as a guideline.
When I was learning this, it helped to relax my eyelids, which had the effect
of shutting out light and other visual distractions. The more you lower your
eyelids without completely closing them, the more you move your attention
in toward the center. Eventually, you may even close your eyes. At the
beginning, however, you’ll want to find the tip of your nose with your eyes.
When you do, take stock of how your eyes are positioned. Half-open, halfclosed? Remember the sensation the next time you sit. Take continual
inventory and write your perceptions down.
Many practitioners ask if they have to sit in the Lotus position. I tell
them that if the Lotus position isn’t comfortable, try the half-lotus. And if
they don’t like that, I tell them they can try reclining. The important thing is
to be comfortable; there’s no point in forcing yourself to be uncomfortable.
If sitting in the Lotus position is only going to incite you to give up, then
find a comfortable position.
The Lotus position is the optimal position for correct breathing. That’s
why it’s prescribed by so many methods. But the real goal of this method,
or any other serious method, is not to learn to sit in a Lotus position, or
even the half-lotus, it’s to learn to breathe correctly. At the beginning, you
want to establish a comfortable posture that allows you to concentrate on
breathing.
When practicing GFM, don’t think too much about the center, rather try
to feel it. Once you feel it, you will realize you are making progress because
you won’t be worrying about half-open, half-closed, or fully open.
Mastering the centering process is not that difficult, sometimes a
practitioner “gets it” in five minutes. But no amount of explanation can
replace trial and error.
The problem stems from NOT REALIZING you have a center. Once
you realize it — and this awareness may only manifest itself gradually —
you have a starting place each time you sit. Gathering your awareness into
the center is real, a sensation, something you feel. But it doesn’t end there.
As you move forward, meditation becomes a whole series of real
experiences and sensations that you can observe in the laboratory of your
own body. In fact, many people are able to slip into the feeling of
centeredness autonomically, almost as if the nervous system had devised a
new function. As one practitioner stated: “If I intend to meditate at say 5
p.m, often at 4:45, I ‘hear’ the process beginning and by the time I sit, with
little or no effort I am ‘in.’”
Establishing a center is the key to experiencing a sense of your own
symmetry. Over the course of your practice, as you begin to master
diaphragmatic deep breathing, you will feel your being expand outward
from the center point you have established.
Step 2. Block out the 10,000 things (mind chatter)
It is very difficult to control the mind directly; almost impossible to tell
the mind to just “shut up” or try what Dr. Herbert Benson calls “passive
disregarding.” Once again, we need a kind of subterfuge or “handle” to stop
the mind from running away. Each teacher has his own approach. I
recommend two approaches to managing the 10,000 things. Both are
attempts to “sidestep” the mind by giving it something banal to do. The first
is counting the breath in a series of four beats: inhale-four, hold-four,
exhale-four, hold-four. Start over. Keep counting. It will occupy your mind.
The second approach entails walking, that is, timing the breath cycle
over a given number of strides, always breathing through the nose, of
course. Inhale-four steps, hold-four steps, exhale-four steps, hold-four steps.
Start over. In this case, the activity of walking and counting occupies the
mind, especially if you practice in a nature setting, thereby becoming less
distracted by the psychic burdens of life and more mindful of nature.
By counting your breath in a regular 4/4 cadence instead of trying to
form a Lotus Petal in perfect detail or contemplate Compassion, you trick
the mind and shift your focus away from the 10,000 things. Counting
occupies the mind just enough to forestall the 10,000 things. At the same
time, it doesn’t require you to do something out of reach — like mystical
contemplation. As you progress, the counting will fall away of its own
accord and your mind will be still.
During this step, you’ll master Diaphragmatic Deep Breathing (DDB)
and Control of Heart Rate. DDB is explained in greater detail on its own
page. 2 Control of Heart Rate is another example of exerting control over an
autonomic bodily function. You cannot command the heart to beat at a
certain rate, so you need a handle, which, in this case, is DDB. And since
the technique is tied to DDB, it is explained on the same page. 3
Step 3. Practice regularly each morning, preferably before eating
As with any endeavor, regularity is the key to success. If you practice
every day, you’ll begin to notice the little signals your body sends out.
Then, not only will you watch for signals, you’ll find you are able to
interpret them.
“One thing has to be remembered about meditation; it is a long
journey and there is no shortcut. Anyone who says there is a
shortcut is befooling you. It is a long journey because the change is
very deep and is achieved after many lives — many lives of routine
habits, thinking, desiring. And the mind structure; that you have to
drop through meditation. In fact it is almost impossible — but it
happens. A man becoming a meditator is the greatest responsibility
in the world. It is not easy. It cannot be instant. So from the
beginning never start expecting too much and then you will never be
frustrated. You will always be happy because things will grow very
slowly. Meditation is not a seasonal flower which within six weeks
is there. It is a very, very big tree. It needs time to spread its roots.”
— OSHO
Step 4. Energy Buildups
When you detect movement in the lower belly as you breathe (100 days
in is a reference cited in The Secret of the Golden Flower), you are ready to
engage the backward-flowing method.
What is it that moves? It is more a sensation than a substance that
moves in the lower belly, a sensation that may be perceived as breath or
energy or breath energy. Whatever its composition, it has the properties of
movement and direction. You will perceive it as a sensation, something you
can feel, but not actually touch, hear, or see. This sensation may be
perceived differently by individual practitioners. That’s the reason it’s
difficult to express with everyday language. I perceived it as a current of air
in the lower belly, but now I’m convinced after many years of reflection and
years of listening to various accounts, that it is not air or breath, but an
etherized or distilled form of sexual energy. Where does this energy come
from? Michael Bradford calls it “psychic fuel,” a term I really like. Is it
breath? Is it energy? Is it breath energy? Call it what you want, it’s the
result of the DDB, the beginning of the sublimation process, the fact that
you are starting to harness your innate energies instead of wasting them.
It’s the effect that correct breathing practices have on the body’s sexual
energies; correct breathing arouses the sublimation process, which is a
distillation process. Sexual fluids are transformed into pure pranic energy
(psychic fuel, if you like) by diaphragmatic deep breathing practices. In
other words, semen or cervical fluids are distilled into pure pranic energy.
This movement in the lower belly is a sensation you have probably never
felt before. You will either feel it or you won’t. If you don’t, I encourage
you to continue practicing until you feel the breath energy circulating. If
you do feel it, read on. I will explain the purpose of the backward-flowing
method, which is to divert this breath energy (the distilled seminal fluid or,
in the case of a woman, the distilled cervical fluid) to the brain. If you
thought it had any other purpose, you were mistaken. This is the Secret of
Life — plain and simple.
Although the backward-flowing method is the key to making it all
work, it’s a big step to consider, because there’s no turning back. Using
Golden Flower Kundalini Meditation to activate the Life Force is a
restorative process — physically, mentally, spiritually—for me and for the
ancients who studied and practiced this method in the past, as well as for
modern practitioners. Yet, it is a life-changing step. It will affect your being
from body to mind, from eating habits to sexual nature. The pranic breath
energy (distilled seminal fluid) will be diverted to the brain and used to
create a new being with a rejuvenated body and an aptitude for greater
metaphysical exploration and understanding. Once the process is underway
— the distilled seminal fluid is diverted to the brain — sexual activity and
even procreation have a debilitating effort, at least during the first phase.
The brain needs a constant supply of this pranic breath energy, so you must
conserve it.
Diaphragmatic deep breathing is the key to stabilizing the heart rate, but
the key to causing the energy to flow upward to the brain is the backwardflowing method. It, too, works like pump-priming. Reversing the direction
of the breath energy begins the process of drawing distilled seminal fluid up
the spinal column.
Some respondents ask me what’s so special about restorative Golden
Flower Meditation. They say any number of serious meditation methods
include some sort of sublimation process. And they’re right; some do. The
difference is that the backward-flowing method works by drawing the
distilled seminal fluid (breath-energy )up the spinal column, not by thinking
or visualizing it. What do I mean by drawing? I’ve been asked that question
many times. This is a very subtle technique whose implementation begins
only at the moment when a practitioner perceives that this distilled breath
energy has the property of direction. This occurs in the lower belly.
You may remember that in Step 3 I spoke about regularity and receiving
signals from the body. Detecting the properties of movement and direction
is a perfect example of this type of signal. If you practice regularly, master
diaphragmatic deep breathing, learn to slow your breath down until you
can’t hear it, you will be able to control your metabolic responses — heart
rate, etc. Your being will reach a state of total stillness during meditation, a
state of permanent attentiveness, a state of inner visualization, the point
where breath takes over being. You will be able to observe sensations inside
your body. These phenomena are real occurrences. In The Future of the
Body, Murphy points to them as examples of the metanormalities of
everyday life.
When you become aware of this activity — that the breath energy in
your belly has the properties of movement and direction — it will put you
on notice that the time has come to decide whether you want to continue.
Should you decide to go forward, all you have to do is command this pranic
energy to change directions. It will obey. It will appear to you that you have
changed the direction of the flow of air in your breathing. Instead of
moving down the back and up the front, you will command it to move down
the front and up the back — the backward-flowing method!
How does “commanding the breath to change directions” work?
Recently, a young woman started a dialogue about it over the Internet. She
came up with the phrase “directed intention.” It’s a phrase I think works
well to describe the process.
Many people have asked me when they can expect this
sensation/activity to occur. Many ask why it hasn’t already happened for
them. They even say they think it might be happening, but they aren’t sure
that they are able to recognize it. They ask me to help them.
I tell people that it usually happens about 100 days into the meditation
practice, but before it happens, they must master each step, each technique
in turn. In other words, there are a certain number of dependencies. How
can an individual expect to be able to detect the property of direction in the
flow of air in the lower belly if he hasn’t slowed down his breath to the
point of absolute stillness? If you do not hear your breath, you become that
much more able to “feel” it, to become one with it. Once you become one
with it, you can direct it.
Here is a variation proposed by reader, Rajiv Prajapati:
“The meditation requires the practitioner to sit straight and “not
move a muscle.” The head should be facing straight forward, too. I
remember Choson Ninja telling us to imagine the head being held
by a thread to help in the positioning. After this, the practitioner
does diaphragmatic breathing, imagining a fire in one’s hair growing
bigger and burning brighter with each inhalation. One should also
breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth.
“In my experience, if it went right, contrary to my visualization
of a stationary ball of fire, I felt something moving round and round
in my belly. I’d then let go of the fire visualization and simply
imagine the area of sensation growing larger and denser with each
inhalation.
“Some might also experience the hair rising in certain parts of
their body. These days I have strange experiences and my channels
are extremely blocked by a very dense energy. I cannot even feel the
energy flow through my entire body as I do a normal inhalation.
This particular chi meditation is not so easy for me now as it was
then, and I experience the hair-raising sensation in my abdomen a
lot when I try it. I suppose that means the hair-raising sensation
indicates an error, namely the energy not being gathered in the hair.”
But you must master deep breathing completely to the point where
inhalation and exhalation become totally still. How long will it take to
master deep breathing to the point where you observe the aforementioned
“property of movement”? Whether it takes 100 days or 365 days, if you
want to succeed, you’ll have to continue until you can breathe without
hearing your breath. Silent on inhalation; silent on exhalation.
As for me telling you if the activity has begun or telling you when it
might begin, I can’t do that. It’s up to you to learn to communicate with
your body. What I can say is that if you progress through the breathing
exercises and learn to listen to your breathing cycle, you will eventually
detect the property of movement, as if the air in your belly is moving. In
fact, you will become aware of the slightest occurrences within your body.
Why is drawing the distilled seminal fluid (sexual energy) up the spinal
column superior to thinking or visualizing, or forcing it up the spinal
column? Those methods can cause the distilled seminal fluid to go up the
wrong channel, a condition that may induce severe pain or cause other
problems. In Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, Gopi Krishna
explores this issue in depth.
The backward-flowing method never lets this happen. Why? Because,
once again, it’s like pump-priming. Changing the direction of the breath
energy kicks off the sublimation process, opening the reservoir of seminal
fluid and sending its distilled essence on its way up the proper channel. It’s
a seamless, imperceptible, hand-shaking process — the breath slowly
drawing the seminal fluid out of its reservoir, distilling it, and sending it up
the spinal column.
The question most people ask after What is the backward-flowing
method? is How does it work? The backward-flowing method is a process
with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And like any process, it has to
proceed step-by-step in proper order, like a scientific experiment. The first
step is to reverse the breath. Reversing the breath triggers step two: drawing
the distilled seminal fluid up the correct channel in the spine. It ensures that
the process will unfold correctly, without harming or frightening the
practitioner.
The whole process is a series of dependencies. Step one “allows” the
next step to proceed without adversely affecting the process or the results,
which are 1) Kundalini activation; and 2) Life Force arousal. However, one
cannot reverse the breath energy without first detecting the property of
movement in the flow of air in the lower belly (another dependency).
Step 5. Autopilot
In a few days, you’ll be on autopilot. That is, you won’t be able to
change the direction of your breath back again. The Kundalini process will
continue until the breath energy reaches the brain — the third eye, in fact.
You will be able to observe this activity. This is the moment. You have
entered the It does you! phase. The natural Life Force (the Primal Spirit)
has reassumed control. I can’t tell you exactly what will happen; every case
is different, but I can predict that you will begin to observe preliminary
effects, such as the magic elixir, the healing breath, and involuntary
movements. There are others. The Life Force will explore your body,
seeking out areas that need attention. Your auto-diagnosis and self-healing
has begun.
Remember to hold to a raw foods diet. This is the most frequent source
of problems in this stage, so be sure to stay as raw as possible. If not
completely raw, try to include a 75% alkaline diet of raw fruits and
vegetables in your diet, for they produce the vital, easily digestible energy
you need to fuel your activated Life Force. Even small amounts of alkaline
raw fruits and vegetables provide a lot of energy, including hormones,
oxygen, enzymes, vitamins, and minerals. Cooked food provides only the
last two elements. Kundalini cannot flourish in a toxic host, so detoxify!
Step 6. Wait for further orders
The Life Force (Kundalini) has taken over. The conscious mind is no
longer in charge. The Life Force created you; it won’t let you get in trouble
if you listen to it. Not that the Mind won’t try to “seduce” you into doing
things the “old, familiar way.” It will. Just remember who’s in charge, sit
back, and wait for further orders. They will come! Not out of “the burning
bush,” but from your body. It’s the body you should be listening to. Your
consciousness will begin to expand. You will be able to overcome your
addictions, and you will make better life decisions.
Read a report by a person who adapted and practiced GFM for 100
days. His report covers breathing techniques, posture, leg and back muscles,
states of mind attained, equipment, avoiding distractions, place and time,
and, lastly, dedication.
Peer Review
No journal of Kundalini-Life Force Science exists. It is the purpose of
this site 4 to act as a resource for peer review. If anyone has an alternate
explanation, description, or clearer way of expressing the ideas and topics
presented on these pages (including the GFM method), it is hoped he/she
will suggest it.
V
A Mo re D e t a i le d Me t h o d
Master Chia estimates that it will take thirty-five books to convey
the full Universal Tao System.
— AWAKEN HEALING LIGHT OF THE TAO MANTAK CHIA
17
THE MICROCOSMIC ORBIT
I
f you’re a person who can’t live without painstaking detail, who can’t
accept that a minimalist method like GFM — one limited in technical
details and terminology — is capable of activating Kundalini, then
you need to consider a system like the Universal Tao System — all 35
volumes of it. Of course, there’s more to the method than just awakening
kundalini, but I’m not qualified to evaluate its doctrinal aspects, except to
say there are similarities with the teachings of The Secret of the Golden
Flower, especially Universal Tao System’s Microcosmic Orbit (MCO)
meditation techniques.
Can a method like GFM, based on centering, diaphragmatic breathing,
control of heart rate, detection of energy, and the rerouting of energy really
deliver the goods? For some people even the minimal techniques of the
GFM are excessive. For example, Buddha’s notion sitting in one place until
something happened was enough for him. He didn’t seem to need the
backward-flowing method, the Lower Tan Tien, or any of the extensive
terminology that either GFM or MCO employs. He figured it out by
himself.
Many variations of methods similar to MCO and to GFM induce a safe,
permanent Kundalini activation. Some produce less than satisfactory results
— either they don’t work or they thrust the practitioner into psychological
disarray, or worse, into a hell of physical discomfort and pain. With
Kundalini nothing is certain.
If I was to offer a Do or Don’t — up or down verdict on whether you
should attempt to raise kundalini, I would have to say: Don’t try it. There
are too many unsuccessful attempts that lead to confusion and panic or, at
the very worst, to medical — clinical, pathological, and neural —
conditions doctors are unable to diagnose, much less treat.
Of course, you may be a person who doesn’t like to hear don’t do that
warnings. They spur you to do the exact opposite. So be it. If you refuse to
Google the dangers of kundalini, you certainly won’t listen to me.
It’s not that I’m against your trying or that I’m promoting any one
method, including mine. Rather, I’m against a headlong rush into anything
— against doing anything without a good reason. So did I have a reason to
pursue kundalini?
If you read Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time, you
understand my reasons. As a result of a childhood injury, I had a deformity
which GFM not only corrected, it happened to be the only way this type of
injury could be corrected.
I might have gotten more into MCO had I known about it in 1970, but I
didn’t. Although many of its teachings have been known for thousands of
years, they were not compiled until Mantak Chia undertook to do so. It’s a
great system — one that shares many teachings with GFM:
“Taoism is rooted in an underlying deep ecology of the body that
affirms the importance of the body in the spiritual process.” 1
The same is true of GFM. The energies of the body feed the awakening
process; it starts with the physical and proceeds to the metaphysical. Well,
actually it starts with the idea of self-realization or attaining some sort of
spiritual understanding, which leads to a practice of some sort.
Both methods produce Kundalini awakenings, but as we’ve recently
learned from the increase in unwanted and unwelcome kundalini
awakenings, it not so much the awakening in and of itself; it’s the quality of
the awakening the counts. Is it permanent? Was it painful? Did the pain go
away? Is the person functional? Can he/she work? Has his/her family life
suffered?
The problem with an extensive system founded on dogma and doctrine
is that it tends to develop a political hierarchy that’s intolerant of new ideas
and goes all out to uncover heresy. A positive factor here is, like GFM,
MCO is not a belief system, per se. Most of Awaken Healing Light of the
Tao, the one book in their canon I’ve delved into, contains exercises and
anatomical teachings.
Nevertheless, not long ago, I gave a webinar on GFM. After describing
the detection of energy and the process of routing it up the spine to the
brain, a Taoist attendee asked me how the “energy up the spine to the brain”
worked, and kept telling me that I had forgotten to include clenching the
perineum as part of the process.
No matter how many ways I answered the question, using a variety of
nuance, straight talk, and metaphor, it wasn’t enough. GFM doesn’t employ
the perineum in that way. GFM is based on breathing; it isn’t necessary to
clench the perineum. Once you detect the energetic activity (a result of
making the breathing silent and regular) and you witness it moving down
the back and up the front, all you have to do is simply command the energy
to change directions. Those instructions were unacceptable heresies to this
attendee; there had to be something more, said the Taoist attendee.
Here’s one paragraph from the Awaken Healing Light of the Tao that
describes a step in their process:
To make a Chi Bridge, very slightly pull up on the perineum, using
the mind more than muscle to close the sexual organs (men feel as if
they are gently raising the testicles and retracting the penis; women
lightly squeeze the vaginal muscles). Then gently tighten the anus,
pulling it toward the coccyx. Finally, gently tighten the back part of
the sphincter muscle between the anus and coccyx, and feel as if you
were sipping energy into the coccyx and sacrum through a straw.
Send energy from the right hand to the left, and imagine the channel
between these points opening wide with the increased flow of Chi.
Let the energy radiate from the navel, sexual center, and perineum
into the coccyx and sacrum. Spiral or rotate there with the mind and
eyes 36 times each way. Inhale and exhale into the coccyx and
sacrum, using the word “Chi” to increase the energy there. Repeat 3
to 9 times. 2
The above is one paragraph out of 25 pages (pp. 255 - 280) on the MCO
process. What’s special about these 25 pages? All 25 pages are not
dedicated to one method, but, in fact, they contain many alternatives to the
“Basic Microcosmic Orbit.” So if these pages provide alternatives to the
main method, why can’t other viable methods that offer the same results
— that of raising kundalini — exist? Well, as you well know, they can and
they do!
A ND THAT ’ S WHAT I MEAN BY HERESY : THE FOCUS SHIFTS FROM PRAXIS TO
enforced uniformity. And by the way, why so many alternatives? Probably
because some people complained at some point that the initial approach
didn’t work for them. So the originators came up with alternatives. Not
unusual. If one approach doesn’t work, tweak it and offer alternatives. But
to do that you have to keep an open mind.
For me, MCO is overkill. Doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work; it does.
I’ve met a lot of persons who’ve used it. I’ve also Googled to see if there
have been mishaps and failures, and of course I found there have been. So it
is with any method. Every method has its mishaps for one reason or
another.
As best I understand it — I’ve not practiced the method — MCO takes
a more mechanistic approach than the SGF. It introduces the beginner to a
series of anatomical teachings — both physiological and esoteric. Postures,
positions, movements, techniques, and terminology 3 have to be learned. It’s
the difference between a Piper Cub and a Saturn rocket, a bicycle and a
Tesla. The more complex the machinery, the more likely a breakdown or
failure. Unlike GFM, MCO has a lot of moving parts. The more moving
parts; the harder it is to troubleshoot. And complex models are difficult to
troubleshoot.
I know, I haven’t practiced the method. That would entail going back to
a point before my kundalini activated and starting over — something I
could no more do than I could return to a time before my birth and insert
myself in my mother’s womb to be born again.
Nevertheless, MCO bears many similarities to GFM, both is substance
and purpose, for example:
SIMILARITY ONE
“The Microcosmic Orbit is the key to balancing energies in the
body. The book that launched this wave of interest was Chia’s
Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao, a classic in its field that
offers the essentials on how to guide the life force so it flows in a
loop, known as the basic Microcosmic Orbit, up the spine and down
the front acupuncture channels of the body. Its impact has been
widespread, as it provided the piece of the puzzle missing from
many of the partial teachings arriving in the West from India. These
only showed the energy ascending up the spine, a practice that can
lead to spaciness and which ultimately weakens the body if the
aroused bioenergy is transferred to the head center prematurely.” 4
Author’s Commentary
Both GFM and MCO feature guiding energy in a circular path, up the
spine and down the front, the only difference being the means by which the
energy is guided.
SIMILARITY TWO
“This teaching is neither religion nor philosophy, but a spiritual
science that emphasizes practical benefits to health, sexual vitality,
and emotional and mental balance, and which promises – like a
shining carrot at the end of a very long stick – physical
immortality.” 5
Author’s Commentary
Both methods take a scientific approach to raising kundalini. Neither is
a belief system, although both are founded on the secrets of Taoist and
Buddhist teachings on meditation and ontology.
SIMILARITY THREE
“The energy body is the key to manifesting spirit. The Universal Tao
system offers an inner map and a series of practical methods that
help one more quickly experience the energetic system which links
the physical body with the emotions, thoughts, individual soul, and
universal spirit. This internal map we simply refer to as ‘the energy
body,’ a term that lumps together the whole spectrum of
intermediate levels between the physical body and the pure spirit.” 6
Author’s Commentary
Both processes use the physical body as a means of accessing and
understanding metaphysical actuality.
SIMILARITY FOUR
“More advanced cultivators will soon find themselves in the
opposite position — recognizing that energy-cultivation methods are
only tools, meant to be dropped when they are no longer needed.” 7
Author’s Commentary
This echoes the “You do it; It does you” attribute of kundalini. Once it
happens, you no longer have to practice. Kundalini begins to regulate the
immaterial and well as the material aspects of your being:
“Taoists study both the material and immaterial aspects of nature
and the universe in the belief that the immaterial is both the source
of the material and a product of it.” 8
“The immaterial is both the source of the material and a product of it” is
a seeming contradiction. But think about it: you never would have begun
your spiritual work had the thought sparked an impulse to investigate.
Where did the thought come from? — The immaterial. Likewise, once you
started the work, it involved the body: postures, techniques, etc — The
material. Once mastering the techniques started causing the appearance of
unexplained phenomena, you entered the world of ontology and
metaphysics — The immaterial.
There is one glaring difference between the two systems, and that is the
Microcosmic Orbit seems to consider kundalini some sort of spiritual
aberration:
“Without grounding, the practitioner may experience many negative
side effects from energy practices. Among the many possible side
effects, “Kundalini psychosis” (also known as “Kundalini
syndrome”) is one of the most common. Kundalini psychosis occurs
when too much hot or Yang Chi rushes up the spine (or right or left
psychic channel) to the brain and gets stuck there. Symptoms
include intense heat and/or pressure in the head or heart, visual and
auditory hallucinations, paranoia, disorientation, obsessive thinking,
and insomnia. These symptoms can persist for days, weeks, or even
longer.
Some people have experienced Kundalini psychosis
spontaneously without having done any energy practices at all.
Others have activated it accidentally through recreational drug use.
There are also some who have triggered Kundalini psychosis as
result of doing meditation practices that do not emphasize balanced
energy circulation. Hakuin Zenji, the father of the Japanese Rinzai
school of Zen Buddhism, wrote in his famous book The Embossed
Tea Kettle about the “Zen illness” that frequently afflicted his monks
and nearly killed him. Hakuin finally went to a Taoist hermit for a
cure.
“In modern times, people who experience Kundalini psychosis
usually do not know what is causing the problem and are often
diagnosed as psychotic. Many have been institutionalized in
psychiatric hospitals and treated, usually unsuccessfully, with strong
medication and psychotherapy. Because the root of this disorder is
actually energetic, the most effective cure for Kundalini psychosis is
to lead the energy back down from the head to the navel or soles of
the feet. This is accomplished by opening the Microcosmic Orbit.
“Bringing the energy down is much easier if one learns
grounding techniques. Earth energy, Yin and magnetic, helps attract
the energy downward. One can also draw the Yin earth energy
upward; this cools the heat in the head and increases the kidneys’
Yin power. The rapidity and effectiveness of this cure can be
dramatic; often symptoms are reduced almost immediately, and total
cures can be brought about within two or three-weeks, if not days.
“The Microcosmic Orbit is the treatment of choice for Kundalini
psychosis, in which too much energy rushes up to the head and
becomes stuck there. We have had several cases in the Healing Tao
where people previously confined to psychiatric hospitals due to
lack of understanding and misdiagnosis of this phenomenon were
completely restored to health through practice of the Microcosmic
Orbit alone. In other cases, people learning the Microcosmic Orbit
were able to give up powerful psychiatric medications with no
further problems.” 9
After encountering this section in Awaken Healing Light of the Tao, at
first I was taken aback at the apparent variance in equating the two schools
— Chinese and Indian, as I understood them. Even though they use similar
techniques in their methods, I began to realize there was a fundamental
disconnect, probably due to vocabulary and terminology differences
between the Chinese and the Indian interpretations, as evidenced in the
goals of each. The stated goal of MCO is “to awaken the Healing Light,
Chi, or life-force within.” Likewise, GFM’s stated goal is to awaken the life
force, or Prana, within. It uses a variation of kundalini meditation to do so.
I’m not sure there are exact terminological equivalencies — I couldn’t
find one — a situation that causes misunderstanding when dealing with two
different cultures and their respective lexicons. Nevertheless, I believe it’s a
topic worth exploring, if for no other reason than just to see, once again,
how terminology encumbers praxis. Here are some valiant examples of chat
board renderings:
“Chi is the original Chinese word (Qi in the pinyin transliteration
system) Ki Is how the same word is called in Japanese. Many
original Chinese words have a similar fate, Chan became Zen.
“Chi is a generic term in Chinese philosophy and traditional
science: most people think of the notion related to human body Chi,
circulating through the meridians. But there are a lot of Chi forms,
some of them totally unrelated to humans.
“The human Chi itself has many varieties. Some of them are not
existing by themselves but are the result of internal cultivation. One
of these forms is developed by mixing sexual Chi with breathing
Chi. A reaction is normally taking place in the lower part of body
close to the genitals and this energy form when created spreads in
the rest of the body, often rising through channels parallel to the
spine. This form of Chi is called Kundalini in Indian Tantric
terminology.” 10
Here’s another stab at it from the same webpage:
“Qi or chi - in transliterated Chinese - and ki - in transliterated
Japanese are all the same thing. In the Chinese view of life and
reality, then is a single energy that moves through all life and all
things. It comes from various sources, has various qualities, and
manifests in all the forms of life and physical reality. It is all qi.
“The closest equivalent in yoga and Ayurvedic medicine of India
is prana, life force. Virya, vitality, in Buddhism is also quite close.
“In these systems, this vital energy can be perceived directly,
and its effects — such as heating or cooling — can be perceived
indirectly. It can also be moved and directed. The healing art of
qigong means literally qi work or qi exercise. We can exercise our qi
just as we exercise our muscles.
“If there is an actual reality behind qi (and I do think so, myself,
as I work with it), then qi and prana are two names for the same
phenomenon, seen in two very different healing systems: Taoist and
Yogic.
“Kundalini is one manifestation of prajna. It is prajna dormant
in the root chakra (located near the tailbone). In yogic practice, it is
considered to be a vast store of vital energy that can be awakened,
and it will then awaken and energize all chakras (energy centers).
The practice of activating this energy and directing it to energize the
7 primary chakras aligned along the spine from base (near the
tailbone) to crown (at the top of the head) is called kundalini yoga.
“Chakras, as such, are not recognized in Chinese anatomy.
However, there is a practice equivalent to kundalini yoga that is part
of qigong. It is called the microcosmic orbit. One moves qi in a
cycle up the central channel of the spine, through the crown, and
down the front of the body. Balancing this internal cycle both
balances one’s own vital energy and also balances ones inner system
(the microcosm) in relation to all the qi of the universe, the
macrocosm.
“I practice both microcosmic orbit and kundalini yoga regularly.
In my own experience, qi is prana, and kundalini is one
manifestation of qi.
“I feel it important to make a note of caution: These practices
are not for beginners. Done with too much force or intention, or to
achieve specific results, or done without sufficient slow, careful
preparation and purification over a number of years, both kundalini
yoga and the microcosmic orbit can cause very difficult imbalances
in the body and emotions.” 11
It’s self-evident that Mantak Chia’s demonization of kundalini is the
product of mixed-up terminology that in no way nullifies the brilliance of
the Universal Tao System. There is also a soupçon of competitive
provocation here as there is in much of Internet discussion that seeks to pit
Kundalini Yoga and the Microcosmic Orbit against each other as rivals, as
typified by the following Dao Bums exchanges:
“I've practiced a lot inner energy work the past 4 years. I've
started with the microcosmic orbit where the energy is moved up at
the back and moved down at the front. A few weeks ago I've started
kundalini yoga in which I move the energy only up from the pelvic
floor up to the head or even further through the head to the crown
chakra. I do both (microcosmic orbit and kundalini yoga) sitting or
lying with no asanas or such.
“The thing is, kundalini feels somehow more easy and relaxing
because it's only moving the energy up. In the microcosmic orbit it
doesn't feel natural to move the energy down and I must force it,
which creates tension.” 12
As for a Taoist or Chinese Medicine equivalent term for kundalini, there
doesn’t seem to be an exact one:
“According to a famous Taoist master translated in Secrets of
Chinese Meditation by Charles Luk, when the microcosmic orbit
naturally becomes active from practicing reverse abdominal
breathing while meditating on the Dan Tien, after it is full of chi and
becomes burning hot, the heat and energy goes through the orbit, up
the spine, burning and vibrating all over the body and continues
back down the front of the body into the Dan Tien. This all takes
place in stages and not necessarily in one instance. This
phenomenon is exactly the same as described in Indian kundalini
traditions and that of Tibet. The Taoists do not seem to call it
kundalini, but he phenomenon is the same — same referent,
different name.” 13
Once again, can there be more than one Chi? More than one kundalini?
It seems more likely that there are more terms for the same event,
experience and/or condition, but only one reality:
“There is only what is and the spiritual experience is universal
regardless of tradition. Some acknowledge different things as
significant or ‘it’ but they are generally along the same line of
experience.
“Yes, in Taoism, Kundalini has been referred to as the Valley
Spirit and by some as Tao itself (so have other things, depends on
who you talk to). I have found the Hindu tradition to have broken
this down into a comprehensive explanation that makes sense to me.
Remember though that part of any comprehensive system is the
acknowledgement of that aspect that is not knowable and beyond
knowing.
“There are so many different terms that may overlap in meaning
that make it more challenging to say this = that. For example, some
people are referring to Kundalini Yoga, which is a practice in itself,
aimed at the same thing all other traditions are seeking. But
Kundalini Yoga is not Kundalini. Some see Kundalini as the
generative force alone. This is a using the term in a way that is not
generally accepted as what is being pointed at, however, it is more
common than not, i.e., Kun Lun uses the term that way.
“Inner Alchemy is a practice that prepares one’s body and
energy channels to be able to as safely as possible handle Kundalini
when it awakens. It also opens up inner space so that you can more
fully integrate this into your consciousness (sometimes referred to as
enlightenment when it is permanently ingrained/conscious to the us
as individuals). This does not mean that the process is over though.
“Kan and Li is a practice used in Taoist inner alchemy after
other fundamentals have been practiced and experienced in the way
the process goes.
“Chi or prana is generally characterized by being non-intelligent
and direct able. Kundalini energy on the other hand IS intelligent
and although it may be sometimes be influenced by us, it is most
readily accepted that it must be surrendered to as it is the true "doer"
of all things. This is the divine Mother, yet, it also is not possible
without the divine Father aspect that is referred to as the
unknowable aspect. One cannot exist without the other so really
they are also one and the same. These are at a deep inner level of
being yet always everywhere and everything.
“There are also variations in types of Chi moving on a scale
from closer to manifestation / physical to the unmanifested
‘uncarved block’.”
“I would not recommend you try to practice anything out of the
book you are buying without a teacher or that you find a book or
system (if that is your goal) that is accessible and designed for the
purpose of practice. Yes, it can be done without a human in-person
teacher, but Kundalini is not something to pursue haphazardly as it
is the most powerful thing there is.” 14
So whether there’s a word for kundalini in Chinese or not, doesn’t mean
the phenomenon doesn’t exist; it does — in every country, in every person.
The techniques and the vocabularies may differ, but the fundamental
biological mechanisms of the human body are the same.
Putting aside the discussion over whether MCO raises kundalini, I took
a moment to explore some reasons why Mantak Chia associates kundalini
with psychosis and has nothing insightful or enlightening to say about it. In
his book, he makes two references to learning Kundalini Yoga, followed by
19 references to kundalini as a psychosis, which made me wonder if he had
anything to say about other Sanskrit terms. There were a few mentions of
Yoga in association with modifiers such as Taoist, Kriya, or Dream Yoga,
three mentions of Prana, mostly as an equivalent for Chi, 12 instances of the
word Chakra, mostly to underline the differences in esoteric anatomy
espoused by Indian and Chinese ontologies. No mention was made of any
of the following Sanskrit terms: Asana, Atman, Bhakti, Bodhi, Brahma,
Citta, Dalas, Dharma, Karma, Nadi, Prakriti, Shakti, Siddha, or Tantra.
Physician, heal thyself
This may seem like a funny sort of proof. So why is it significant?
Mantak Chia singles out kundalini as a pernicious psychotic condition that
only MCO can heal, 15 even though its reality — the way the kundalini
mechanism (or its Chinese equivalent, or whatever one deems this to be)
operates in the human body — is the same all over the world, in spite of
culture, language, sex, geography, or any other characteristic. No mention is
made of kundalini’s fundamental role in Yoga, consciousness, and human
evolution, the increase in successful kundalini awakenings, or of the
research by such modern luminaries as Gopi Krishna.
Whether he did this to dis a rival or to hype new terminology, I don’t
know, but if it’s the former, it’s emblematic of those “spiritual” teachers and
students, who cling to the notion that their path is somehow more pure,
more authentic. Although this is shortsighted in and of itself, it’s especially
reckless when it’s done to disparage a perceived rival. Metaphysical
research has enough detractors on the outside; criticism from inside the
movement subverts acceptance of all paths. Knowledge should be shared,
not hoarded.
What can we conclude about MCO and GFM? In simplest terms,
Mantak Chia’s Universal Tao System is a way of life while GFM is a selfservice kundalini meditation method, derived from the Secret of the Golden
Flower, for people who like doing things their own way — charting their
own course and working with feedback from the body as they move
forward.
OTHER LIFE FORCE BOOKS TITLES
L
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the relationship between human biology and enlightenment.
Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret at a Time
Curiosity and circumstance often propel individuals beyond the
confines of their upbringing, dumping them into unfamiliar, unexpected
life situations. Thus was JJ Semple transported into a trial-and-error process
of self-discovery along a path that took him from the Eastern Brahmin
establishment, to France, to a meeting with Gopi Krishna in India, and back
to the USA. What he found along the way was Kundalini, the biological
basis of both science and religion. This memoir is a companion/sequel to
The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Kundalini Meditation Method.
The Backward-Flowing Method
For the first time ever, a book dares to reveal the secrets of the world’s
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The Biology of Consciousness: Case Studies in Kundalini
An evidence-based examination on whether consciousness “exists” after
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next worldly incarnation.
Female Kundalini
“When I was first told to let my experience go – to not allow myself to
become absorbed by it or to let it disturb my everyday, normal life – I was
reluctant to do this. I felt that something special had happened and I didn’t
want to forget about it or let it go. It is only now, so many years later, that I
understand why it is essential to let this kind of experience go.”
Seminal Retention and Higher Consciousness: The Sexology of
Kundalini
In the East, semen conservation is recognized as a prerequisite for
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Kundalini Musings
This book consists of essays written over the past seven years. Each
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Available at online stores and at bookshops throughout the world, in
Print and eBook formats.
NOTES
PART I
1 The Biological Basis of Religion and Genius - Gopi Krishna, Harper & Row, 1971, p. 93.
1. WILHELM OR CLEARY
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Thomas Cleary, translator, HarperCollins, 1991, p.
117
2 Bradford, Michael. Consciousness: The New Paradigm (p. 83). Institute for
Consciousness Research. Kindle Edition.
3 https://amzn.to/2XDb6gI
4 Bradford, Michael. Consciousness: The New Paradigm (pp. 70-71). Institute for
Consciousness Research. Kindle Edition.
5 https://amzn.to/2DxsJa1
6 Ibid, p. 67
7 Taoist Yoga: Alchemy & Immortality - Charles Luk
8 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Thomas Cleary, translator, HarperCollins, 1991, pp.
149-150.
9 https://amzn.to/2IQqa6v
10 Kundalini and Kundalini Shakti are analogous stand-ins for the Primal Spirit. It's what
you get when you intermingle terms from Indian and Chinese esoterica.
11 Prana Shakti is NOT the Conscious Spirit; it's that aspect of kundalini at work in the
background during the time the Conscious Spirit (the Ego and the senses) directs and
manages your being.
4 . TERMINOLOGY
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Wilhelm edition, p 22.
2 Halfway Up the Mountain - Mariana Caplan, Hohm Press, 1999.
3 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition - p. 4.
4 Mindfulness and Kundalini http://www.kundaliniconsortium.org/2014/07/mindfulnessand-kundalini.html
5 “Is Kundalini Intelligent?” - The Kundalini Consortium
6 Ancient Teachings of Tantra and Kundalini Yoga - http://www.tantra-kundalini.com/
yantras.htm
PART III
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower, Richard Wilhelm, translator, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1931, p.39.
5. I - HEAVENLY CONSCIOUSNESS (THE HEART)
1 Energy Continuum, Soul, samadhi, nirvana, enlightenment, turiya, shunyata, Brahman,
Atman, Christ Consciousness, Absolute Truth, Atman, God, the Self, Supreme
Consciousness, and more.
2 Tao - Wikipedia
6. II - THE PRIMAL SPIRIT AND THE CONSCIOUS SPIRIT
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition - p. 77.
2 Ibid - pp. 14-15.
3 Ibid - p. 84.
4 See Chapter 2 - Part 5 (Cleary 17-20)
5
Wikipedia,
Samsara
81ra_(Buddhism)
-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sa%E1%B9%83s%C4%
6 Ad Age - http://adage.com/article/adage-encyclopedia/schlitz-brewing/98868/
7 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition - p. 85.
7. III - CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT AND PROTECTION OF
THE CENTER
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition - p. 87.
2 Ibid, p. 88.
3
4 Ibid, p. 91.
5 Ibid, pp. 91-94.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid, pp. 91.
8. IV - CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT AND MAKING THE
BREATHING RHYTHMICAL
1 https://o-meditation.com/2014/11/28/watchfullness-not-concentration-osho/
2 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition, pp. 95.
3 Ibid, pp. 96.
4 The Biology of Consciousness: Case Studies in Kundalini - JJ Semple, Life Force Books,
2014, pp. 85.
9. V - MISTAKES DURING THE CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower - Cleary Edition - p. 99.
10. VI – CONFIRMATORY EXPERIENCES DURING THE
CIRCULATION OF THE LIGHT
1 The italic portion of this passage is missing in Cleary. Wilhelm has included references
to the I Ching and a diagram of Trigrams, for which the italic passages serve as an
explanation.
12. VIII – A MAGIC SPELL FOR THE FAR JOURNEY
1 Have Western expectations along these lines changed since the 1930s? If so, I don’t see
it. Westerners are still as uncritical and as mesmerized by Eastern teachings as they were in
Wilhelm’s day.
13. KUNDALINI MEDITATION MODERNIZED FOR PRIMETIME
1 The Secret of the Golden Flower, Richard Wilhelm, translator, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1931, p.32.
16. THE BACKWARD-FLOWING METHOD
1 The Blueprint of your Physical Body
https://www.commonsensekundalini.com/science_spirituality/the-blueprints-of-ourphysi.html
2 https://www.goldenflowermeditation.com/the_method/making_preparations.html
3 Ibid.
4 Golden Flower Meditation - https://www.goldenflowermeditation.com/
17. THE MICROCOSMIC ORBIT
1 Awaken Healing Light of the Tao - Mantak Chia, p. 20. https://www.
commonsensekundalini.com/science_spirituality/neuroplasticity_kundalini.html
2 Awaken Healing Light of the Tao - Mantak Chia, p. 278, Aurora Press, 1983.
3 Sacred Cow Terminolgy – JJ Semple, https://www.commonsensekundalini.com/
science_spirituality/sacred-cow-terminology.html
4 Awaken Healing Light of the Tao - Mantak Chia, p. 20, Aurora Press, 1983. https://www.
commonsensekundalini.com/science_spirituality/neuroplasticity_kundalini.html
5 Ibid, p. 20.
6 Ibid, p. 21.
7 Ibid, p. 23.
8 Ibid, p. 32.
9 Ibid, pg. 284-287
10 What is the fundamental difference between Chi, Ki and Kundalini? - https://www.
quora.com/What-is-the-fundamental-difference-between-Chi-Ki-and-Kundalini
11 Ibid.
12 Taoist microcosmic orbit vs. kundalini yoga - https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/
46436-taoist-microcosmic-orbit-vs-kundalini-yoga/
13 Kundalini in Taoism? - https://www.thedaobums.com/topic/4809-kundalini-in-taoism/
14 Ibid.
15 Not borne out in any of the chat rooms, such as Dao Bums. There are many accounts of
MCO actually worsening a kundalini condition.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Curiosity and circumstance often propel individuals beyond the confines of their
upbringing, dumping them into unfamiliar, unexpected life situations. Thus was I
transported into a trial-and-error process of self-discovery, a path that took me from the
East Coast Brahman establishment, to France, to a meeting with Gopi Krishna in India, and
back to the USA. What I found along the way was Kundalini, the biological basis of both
science and religion.
How does kundalini come into an ordinary person's life? Is it foreordained like a
priestly calling or is it a Karmic inevitability? Deciphering the Golden Flower One Secret
at a Time describes the unlikely circumstances that foreshadowed, and ultimately shaped,
my kundalini experience!
~ JJ Semple