Chapter XIV
Observations on Higher
Taoist Practices
The following is a discussion by Mantak Chia on the higher levels
of Taoist Esoteric Yoga, tape recorded at the annual retreat in North
Andover, Mass. August 1982.
You endeavor in your practice here to open channels so that
your soul has some place to go. The Microcosmic Orbit provides a
crib for you, when you are a ‘baby’ so that your soul and spirit can
run on it. As you grow up a separate room is made ready to provide
you with privacy.
This room represents the 8 psychic channels. When you get a
bit older you are provided with yet a larger room, the 24 channels.
It is then that you are taught what is good and what is dangerous in
the lesser enlightenment, the greater enlightenment, the greatest
enlightenment, the sealing of the 5 senses and the congress of
heaven and earth. You are ‘six years old’ now and in school. It is
during this time that you acquire the ability to extend the spirit out-
side of you. At first you may be able to let it go out about one foot
and then withdraw it. Gradually you can let it out more and more
until after some time you can let it roam about freely outside of your
body. This education of the soul and spirit is a tedious and time
consuming process, taking 30-35 years.
There may be some geniuses who can become adept at astral
projection in as little as 20 years, but there is always the risk that
madness can ensue with premature exposure to forces that one is
not yet ready for, madness of a sort that masters are afflicted with
and must keep secret. I know, because I have met many troubled
practitioners. In fact, M.D.s refer just such problems to me.
There are teachers who have had ill effects using their own par-
ticular methods, but still continue to teach because they adamantly
maintain faith in those methods that they espouse in spite of how
they have suffered by them. The methods should serve the practi-
tioners. In this light, there is no Taoist method, but rather practioners
who make of Taoist Yoga their own individual methods. Tao is a
Observations on Higher Taoist Practices