Chapter X
Commonly Asked Questions
and Answers on Microcosmic
What is Chi or Electro-Magnetic Life Force?
Chi, otherwise called the Warm Current, Kundalini Power or electro-
magnetic life force, is very difficult to describe because this en-
ergy, or life force, cannot be seen. However, we can feel the life
force in the body. In the early days of Tao, chi was expressed as
nothing in the top portion of the Chinese pictogram and as fire in
the lower part, so that no fire might be conceived of as defining
Chi. More contemporary Taoist sources classify many kinds of Chi.
There is pre-nature Chi, the kind you breathe, as well as the Chi
that is transmuted in our bodies and the kind that has been awak-
ened from sperm or ovary called Ching-chi.
Ching-Chi, the main energy source of our practice, is ultimately
transformed into spiritual energy. We all have Chi from the time we
are conceived. The Taoist teaches us that life force or Chi begins
as the energy you derive from the food you eat and the air you
breathe. In Taoist practice, you draw on many different sources of
energy, which reside in different energy centers in the body, such
as the heart, adrenals, prostate, pineal and the pituitary. There is
yet another kind of energy that we absorb from the solar system,
mix and transform in our body, which produces still another kind of
Chi in a process called Alchemy.
Taoism stresses practice and theory; philosophy and discus-
sion are discouraged as futile. By a simple method of relaxation
and concentratiing on your navel, you can experience for yourself
what the flow of Chi is.
Several of my students had spent as many as five to twenty
years trying to develop Chi and complete the Microcosmic Orbit,
but to no avail. After a short time with me they completed their
objectives in one to four months. They all found this method easy
and natural. Spending just thirty to sixty minutes a day, many whoChapter X