Файл: taoist-secrets-of-love.pdf

Medulla Oblongata

Spinal Cord—

the pathway Chi uses into the brain.

SEXUAL ENERGY, GLANDS, HORMONES, PERSONALITY & DESTINY ARE ALL LINKED TOGETHER IN THE BRAIN.

when you begin cultivating your sexual energy up. Your testicles and your pituitary gland will begin to pulsate together when the ching is cultivated properly, and is a sign that your glandular system is working harmoniously all the time, not just during sex. The pituitary gland in turn regulates the activity of the other glands. When they are in perfect harmony they secrete an exceptionally fine nectar—a superfine hormonal substance undiscovered by sci- entists—which floods the nerve centers of the brain and helps create the feeling of bliss described by so many mystics. This is only one phase of spiritual development, but one that is powerfully affected by the balance of sexual energy in the body.

Sexual activity is equally powerful in the more ordinary spheres of health. Sex offers all of the health benefits of physical exercise. Sex reduces the tendency to compulsive eating while burning calories, and thus helps remedy obesity. Sex strains the heart less than driving a car in city traffic, or watching a good football game. Moreover, the heart rate quickly diminishes after sexual action. (For someone on the verge of a heart attack, passionate sex may be sufficient to trigger it. Passive sex is recommended in this case.)

Loving is thus a great natural antidote to stress. Emotional stress especially causes untold harm, as it is a continuous injury to

every cell. Life in our urban society subjects us to increasing doses of this potent poison.

Stress directly causes cardiovascular degeneration, such as arteriosclerosis and hypertension. Love restores impaired body chemistry by activating the hormonal centers to defend the physical body and by harmonizing our mental and spiritual faculties.

With frequent ejaculation, the benefits of sex begin to decline, and vitality ultimately plummets. The sexual big spender loses stamina. His vision begins to weaken, hair tumbles from his skull. He grows old before his time. The physical damage caused by expelling the sexual essence from the body is greatly alleviated only in couples or individuals who create and sustain a powerful emotional and spiritual love.

Over years of marriage, couples who consistently find a deeper harmony naturally conserve some of their sexual essence. Insurance studies bear this out: married couples live longer than single people. Two can often share the stress of life better than one alone. A better balance of yin and yang is achieved. The very act of love spontaneously transmutes lower vital chi and ching into higher mind. The Taoist methods of cultivating sexual energy are powerful aids to those following this "path of the heart", but take the path a step further by maximizing the benefits of sex for health and personal growth.

In Chicago a group of elderly people urge couples to practice sex in a ritualistic fashion to preserve vitality. The group, called "Sexy Senior Citizens," is the unconscious heir of many comparable societies flourishing in the Orient for millennia which taught Taoist methods of chi cultivation.

With aging all bodily systems become less efficient. Among these is the hormonal system, which regulates important electromagnetic reactions. If hormonal secretion declines from optimal levels, the body must necessarily weaken.

The relations between the hormones, sexuality and aging have not been fully elucidated. However, many researchers in the vanguard of medical science feel that the hormones regulating growth and sexual development play a critical role in aging. These are produced in the pituitary, thyroid and gonads.

The testes have a double function: besides being the factory for the sperm, they produce male hormones, among which is testosterone. The Sertoli cells in the testes produce another hormone,

Much evidence points to the link between harmonious sexual activity and the retardation of aging. Loving sex stimulates highquality hormonal secretion. The presence of these hormones in the blood appears to slow the aging process. With Taoist cultivation one produces unusually potent hormones because one focuses energy directly on the endocrine glands, stimulating them to much greater levels of activity. Because the hormonal energy is constantly circulated within the body instead of being ejaculated, a successful student of Taoist loving finds himself with ever-increas- ing amounts of energy as he grows older.

This increased circulation of sexual energy also redistributes the chi within the body's storage system. As we grow older and our life force is depleted, our body cavities increase in size and are gradually filled with fat or various kinds of pollution that speed the aging process and lower the quality of our final years. The Taoist method draws sexual energy up from the testicles and fills the spinal and cranial cavities with ching. When full, this overflows and begins to fill the chest and abdominal cavities with rejuvenating life force.

These reservoirs of chi within the body supply the raw material used to make the body virtually impervious to disease in the method known as "inner alchemy" to the ancient Taoists. This process of refining the "Elixir of Immortality" or the "Pill of Immortality" may be described in biological terms as storing the body's life-force and then returning it to its source. The chi is moved from these reservoirs within the body cavities into the deepest centers of the brain and bones. The secret of packing chi into the bone marrow is well known to highly achieved masters of Tai Chi Chuan and other internal martial artists. They know that muscle power cannot survive the aging process, but that bones survive for thousands of years. This practice which I will describe in an upcoming book on Iron Shirt Chi Kung, is dependent on retention of sperm power.

Recent scientific studies show the importance of bone marrow to the production of disease fighting white blood cells. These scientists will eventually catch up with the ancient Taoist masters and figure out the full connection between healthy sex, hormones and bone marrow and the prevention of aging and disease.

34 Taoist Secrets Of Love

Those radically opposed to abortion and contraception might as well begin their campaign against men who kill their potential lifeforce by ejaculating needlessly.

Although the Taoists have no concept of sin, they might say that man has fallen to his current weakened psychic state in large part because he has squandered his sexual energies over the last several millennia. The Chinese legends speak of a golden age when all men lived in harmony with nature and transmuted their seed up as naturally as you or I breathe. Whether or not this is literally true is irrelevant—the kernel of truth in the story is that man is capable of a much higher existence than what he now accepts. The story bears a striking resemblance to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve's fall from grace after tasting the forbidden fruits of sexual love. In this sense, the end of the Taoist cultivation is to regain the lost paradise which still exists within every man and woman, their original nature.

The major function of sex in nature is to create new life and to perpetuate the species. Yet in our time humanity has been fruitful and multiplied itself to the brink of overpopulation and its attendant ecological horrors. The abuse of sexual power through indiscriminate procreation has brought humanity to a global crisis. It has accelerated the danger of a war which might result in the extinction of the species.

Apart from certain insects and higher apes, animals engage in sexual intercourse for reproductive purposes only. The female receives the male only at definite mating periods, that overall compromise a small part of the animal's lifespan. It is clear that sexuality plays a different role for humans than it does for animals, and it is critical that men and women become educated as to the possibility sex can play in their own evolution and thus affect the balance of nature as well.

CHAPTER 4

THE SEXUAL ECONOMY

"Man cannot be without woman and woman cannot be without man. If you think intercourse is an isolated or separate act, longevity is threatened and every illness arises."

—from the Recipe for Making Priceless Gold Sun S'su-Mo, physician who lived 101 years

36 Taoist Secrets Of Love

Every man is born with a certain amount of priceless vital chi energy. Some begin with more than others, but for the sake of simplicity let us assume an average man is born with a sum of vitality likened at $1,000,000. Over one's life span this million dollar's worth of life force is spent. Some spend wisely and live heartily into the 80's and 90's. When you are young you spend it faster because it seems like such a huge amount it could never run out.

Most people in our consumer society spend more money than they earn. They borrow themselves deep in the hole, assuming they will earn enough to pay it back later. If they fail, they face bankruptcy or a corrective period of lean living. Through poor habits the same thing happens with life energy, only the penalty is loss of appetite for life, sickness, and death.

Let us say that someone earns an additional 100 units of life force daily through breathing, eating and resting. Yet he may spend 125 units of life through poor diet, smoking, gluttony, overwork, anxiety, constitutional weakness, drug abuse and frequent loss of the vital sex fluid. To spend the extra 25 units he must continuously borrow vitality from the brain and organs. This theft of vital energy from one's own million dollar reserves gradually induces mental and physical sickness and premature aging.

Conserving sexual energy is a practical way to earn 125 units and spend 100 units or less. It's an investment in one's physical, mental, and spiritual growth. The imbalance of one's personal economy can be corrected by reducing the disastrously wasteful expenditure of ejaculation. A "profit" of 25 units of vitality is then made by transforming the conserved sexual fluid into higher mental or spiritual energy. Eliminating other bad habits will reduce the loss and increase the profit, but no other single factor in life is so potent as sexual energy.

If you work hard all day, you've already used up much energy. If you then have a few drinks, eat a heavy dinner and later have sex in which you ejaculate the vital sperm fluid, you are overspending your life's provision prematurely. Some people would call it a day well spent, as they cannot envision anything better in life to spend their energy on. If you continue to overtax your resources, you may wake one morning fatigued with life, sick with arthritis or cancer, or maybe you won't wake up at all. You will have prematurely exhausted your vital capital and may have to die at an age that you feel is somehow "unfair" or possibly worse,

suffer through your final years in life with your creative powers and physical faculties greatly diminished.

I am a Taoist living in the twentieth century near New York City and lead an extremely busy life. I have a wife and an overly energetic young child. I own a computer, drive a car in city traffic, deal with teaching hundreds of students, and maintain a heavy travel schedule flying around the U.S.I know it is possible to lead a rich and rewarding life without exhausting oneself, and have seen my students do the same. The more you cultivate your chi energy with daily practice, the easier it becomes to replace energy spent and still end up ahead.

Of course, if you choose a simpler lifestyle you can progress much more quickly. That's why many Taoists choose to live up in the peaceful mountains. But you can live by the same Taoist principles anywhere. The universe is bountiful if you know how to live with it. Sexual energy is one of the most abundant gifts given to us by nature, yet most people casually toss it away without realizing the full value of its treasure.

As Americans become more aware of the importance of personal health they are seeking to change their lifestyles. Many people are now realizing that they have been living destructively. Fortunately, they have grown conscious before it is too late. Whether they are jogging or taking a dance class, they wish to begin a lifeenergy conservation program. First they must pay the interest on the vital sums they have overspent from their mind and body. After a while they may repay both interest and principal as they begin to produce and conserve more energy. At that point they can take the path of cultivating their chi energy into its original spirit.

Have realistic expectations. You may have spent more vitality than you had to spare. Concentration and patience are necessary to recover it. You can spend $100,000 in an hour, but you may need one year to earn it back. Serious physical and mental trauma, heavy use of drugs, and frequent ejaculation all involve grossly excessive spending. Many young people seem to have unlimited energy. But these youths are toying with the sources of life as if on a wild spending spree.

Many older people apparently in good health are, in fact, tottering on the brink of serious breakdown. Only the strength of habitual self-will allows them to continue to function. When they have a check-up—often prompted by unconscious awareness of