Foreword
During the last twenty-five years the United States and Western
Europe has witnessed an amazing growth of popular interest in a
multitude of personal growth and wholistically based health disci-
plines. The West once again has become a “melting pot” but this
time the cauldron contains a mixture of the sacred traditions of the
East as well as some of the emerging internal technologies of the
body, mind and spirit. This movement, known generally as the
“New Age”, is characterized by popular magazines and a sizable
growing literature, a large number of spiritually oriented groups and
a rapidly growing consumer market for wholistically based medi-
cine and other “appropriate technologies”. We are clearly seeing a
major shift in attitudes and values in our relationships to our inner
lives and our responsibilities for the future of the planet Earth.
Parallel with these developments we can also see emerging a
scientific picture of the universe that resembles the classic world
view of the major oriental religions. The scientific picture that is
developing at the end of the 20th century is less linear, less deter-
ministic and less reductionistic in the frontier sciences of physics
and biology. This picture becomes increasingly similar to the intui-
tive, phenomenological and process/interactive model of man-in
the-universe that has characterized Chinese philosophy and sci-
ence for thousands of years.
These two trends, the growth of “New Age” consciousness and
the shift in our scientific paradigms are beginning to converge in
some practical ways in the field of holistically inspired medicine.
Perhaps the best example of this is the therapeutic modality of
Acupuncture, one of the most powerful techniques in the classical
Chinese medical system. A little known fact about Acupuncture
and Chinese medicine is the enormous debt these systems owe
to Taoist Esoteric Yoga. In fact, Taoist Esoteric Yoga is the mother
of Chinese medicine as well as many other systems of healing
and self-development.
For many Westerners Taoism has seemed an elusive and in-
scrutable path, best exemplified by the oracular mysteries of the I-Foreword