But the Chinese esoteric system is not limited to therapeutic
uses. Practitioners of other techniques, sitting, mantra, pranayama,
can achieve a high level of awareness and a balanced experience
of kundalini-like energies. But several have come to Master Chia
and privately complained that they don’t know what to do with all
their energy, or how to transform it to an even higher level. One
yogi wrote Master Chia that even after doing yoga for 18 years, 12
of them in an advanced practice of kundalini yoga, he had never
felt such a “pure and distilled energy” as he experienced in the
Microcosmic Orbit and first level of Fusion of Five Elements. He
plans to integrate the Taoist yoga into his daily sadhana.
Another high level Zen meditator told Master Chia he felt alien-
ated from the masses of unawakened human beings and depressed
by the mechanicalness of their living only to eat, work, drink, and
sleep. Master Chia taught him how Taoists harmonize with larger
forces outside of the self.
At the very highest level Esoteric Taoist yoga has techniques to
awaken the kundalini energy to such a level that consciousness is
thrust beyond the body for the purpose of doing spiritual work in
subtle realms of consciousness. According to Master Chia, the
Taoist masters modified a crucial aspect of the kundalini yoga tech-
niques learned from Indian masters who travelled to China. The
Taoists detected a practical problem with the Indian method, which
unites the human mind with its higher spirit by literally ascending
out the crown chakra above the head.
If one ascended out the crown chakra prematurely, there were
grave physical and psychic dangers. But if one took too long there
was also the danger of physical death before one had completed
the process of transforming mind and body energy into spiritual
energy. The Taoist masters resolved this problem by incorporating
their knowledge of subtle anatomy of chi flow. The result is that in
Taoist esoteric yoga one does not focus energy on a single chakra,
such as the heart, third eye, or crown chakra, with the intention of
using that energy center as the gateway to higher consciousness.
It is possible to open one or several higher chakras and still have
their power undermined by physical or moral weakness in the lower
energy centers. This can block progress to the highest levels if the
practitioner denies or ignores this imbalance.
The Taoists avoided these problems by absorbing higher en-
ergy, whether from outside sources or sexual resources and cir-
Observations on Higher Taoist Practices