Chi-Gung and the Three Powers: The Harmony of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity
Heaven (tien), Earth (di) and Humanity (ren) are known in Taoist philosophy as the Three Powers (san tsai). Humanity takes form and functions in a pivotal position between the cosmic powers of tien and the natural forces of di, ‘covered by Heaven above and supported by Earth below’, and human life flourishes to the extent that it harmonizes itself with the forces of the cosmos and the elements of nature which shape it.
‘Heaven’ is the source of primordial spirit and universal awareness, the virtue of wisdom, and the volitional power of intent, as well as all the mental faculties associated with the postnatal human mind. Essentially open and empty, naturally radiant and clear, and endowed with infinite power, Heaven suffuses the human spirit with the primordial ‘Virtue of Tao’ (dao-deh), which empowers the human mind with the capacity to realize the pure primordial awareness known as ‘enlightenment’ in Buddhism and ‘immortality’ in Taoist tradition. Heaven is the abode of deities and a synonym for the divine creative power known as ‘Tao’ or the ‘Source’ in Chinese tradition, ‘Brahma’ in Hinduism, ‘Buddha’ or ‘Bodhi’ in Buddhist thought, and ‘God’ in Western religions. Heaven manifests its primordial power in human life through the mysterious forces of fate and destiny (ming), the universal laws of karma (yin-guo) and reincarnation (lun-hui), and the mystical gifts of divine inspiration (ling-gan) and spiritual communion (tung-ling) with divine beings.
Heaven is the penultimate expression of Yang in human life, and its most obvious visible manifestation on earth are the sun and the sky, the planets and the stars, and other celestial sources from which a constant stream of cosmic forces rain down upon Earth and Humanity. The ancient Taoist sciences of astrology and divination evolved as means to analyse, interpret and predict how the various forces of Heaven influence and guide human life on Earth. The sky is the primary symbol of Heaven in Taoist philosophy and thus the words for ‘Heaven’ and ‘sky’ are the same in Chinese – tien. Weather, which reflects the various conditions and transformations of energy in the sky, is therefore viewed as an earthly manifestation of Heaven’s moods and is referred to in Chinese as tien-chi, which means ‘Heaven’s Temper’ or simply ‘Celestial energy’, depending on the nuance intended.
‘Earth’ refers to the material world of soil and water, mountains and rivers, land and ocean, plants and animals, that constitute the concrete context of corporeal human life. It is the source of the natural forces and the basic elements and energies that compose and regulate our physical bodies and ‘make the world go round’. Essentially solid and stable, rhythmic and balanced, Earth is the fountainhead of the Five Elemental Energies and the setting for the cyclic transformations of nature which shape the physiological forms and govern the biological functions of the human body. The human system extracts earthly elements and terrestrial energies from the primary postnatal sources of food, water and air, from which it produces the True Energy that fuels the physical body. Humans also derive postnatal nourishment from other supplemental sources in nature, such as herbs and minerals, sounds and colours, and the powerful energy of sex. Indeed, so important and potent is sex as a source of vital energy in human life that in written Chinese the same ideogram is used to denote the words for ‘nature’ and ‘sex’.
Earth is thus the polar Yin counterpart to the Yang power of Heaven in human life. ‘Heaven was created by the accumulation of Yang,’ states the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, ‘and Earth was formed by the accumulation of Yin.’ Earth expresses its power in human life through the basic instincts for survival and the primal drives to procreate and propagate the species through sexual reproduction. Its main manifestations are the planet earth itself, the moon and the lunar cycles of tide and time which its orbit around the earth governs, the myriad species of plant and animal life, the cyclic changes of season, the phases of birth, maturation, decay and death, and other basic forces and rhythms of nature. Earth is therefore the main focus of the medical and martial arts, the sciences of nutrition and physiology, geomancy and physics, and sexual yoga.
The harmony of Earth and Humanity is achieved primarily by physiological means. Chi-gung does of course enhance and support these functions by increasing the efficiency of digestion and metabolism, improving respiration and circulation, and balancing all the vital functions of the body, and therefore it plays an important role in orchestrating a healthy and harmonious relationship between Earth and Humanity and enhancing the human system’s efficiency in utilizing the temporal resources of earth.
It is in the harmony of Heaven and Humanity that chi-gung plays its most direct and indispensable role as a mediator of energy. Unlike Earth, Heaven is eternal and immortal, and its power is therefore infinite and inexhaustible. The energies which humans tap from the universe through chi-gung practice bypass the physiological functions of the body and enter into the human energy system directly through the energy gates, pulsating throughout the body’s meridien network as waves and currents of pure primordial energy. Unlike the food, water and air of Earth, all of which produce waste products in the body as they yield their energies – wastes which pollute the system and require a lot of energy to eliminate – the primordial energy derived from the stars and planets and other astral sources of the universe fuel the human system without polluting it, providing an unlimited supply of the highest grade energy, free of cost. That’s why this energy is commonly referred to in English as ‘universal free energy’ – because it’s freely available to any being in the universe who learns how to tap into it. Chi-gung is the only technology you’ll ever need to hook your own personal energy system directly into the infinite ‘Internet’ of universal free energy, the very same energy that fuels the stars and planets, creates all things under Heaven, and sustains all forms of life throughout the universe. But in order to utilize this simple technology, it’s important to first understand how the human equipment involved in managing energy works.
Microcosm and Macrocosm: ‘The Universe Within’
The human body and its network of energy channels and power points form a microcosmic replica of the macrocosmic universe at large – ‘the universe within’ – complete with its own ‘Heaven’ and ‘Earth’, its internal emotional ‘weather’ and organ ‘ecosystems’, its ‘rivers’ of blood and ‘mountains’ of flesh, its mineral ‘ores’ of bones and its saline ‘oceans’ of cellular fluids. Each cell, tissue, organ and other part of the body emanates its own specific electromagnetic energy field, which pulsates at its own particular frequency and regulates its own internal energy currents, while the entire body itself radiates an auric energy field that extends about one metre around the surface. The human energy field interacts with and is influenced by the larger energy fields around it, such as those produced by the wiring in houses and buildings, by geological formations of the earth, by large groups of people, by continents and oceans, by the force field of the planet itself, and by the greater cosmic fields of the solar system, stars and galaxies. A positive empowering effect is produced when the human system and all of its parts resonate in harmony with the naturally balanced, dynamically vibrant fields of nature and the cosmos. Negative debilitating effects are created in the body when the erratic, unbalanced patterns of artificial energy fields such as those produced by high-voltage power lines and transformers, televisions and computers, cellular phones and microwave ovens, are allowed to suppress, distort and otherwise interfere with the natural oscillations of the human energy field.
The human energy field functions like a microcosm of the entire cosmos and all of its various sub-fields, such as stars and planets, sun and moon. The head is associated with the positive Yang pole of Heaven, the sacrum houses the negative Yin pole of Earth, and linking these two poles is the ‘stairway to Heaven’. In the physical body, that stairway is the spine, but in the auric energy body it’s the Central Channel, also known in Chinese as the ‘Thrusting Channel’ (chung-mai), along which are located the seven energy centres called ‘elixir fields’ (dan-tien), or ‘chakras’. Each of these centres oscillates at a specific frequency, and each chakra, when open and balanced, resonates with specific bands of higher energy from the cosmos, thereby drawing the higher powers that ride on those frequencies directly into the human system, where they are transformed into energy pulses specific to the human body and mind.
The seven chakras function as receivers and transformers for the cosmic energies of Heaven and the natural energies of Earth that chi-gung draws into the human system through various ‘energy gates’ (chi-guan) on the body (Fig. 2). The main entry gates for the astral energies of Heaven are the ni-wan-gung and bai-hui points on top of the head, while the major gates for the forces of Earth are the hui-yin point at the perineum, the lao-gung points on the palms and the yung-chuan points on the soles. Cosmic energy enters the seventh chakra on the crown of the head as clear white light, which carries the full spectrum of astral energies. When this energy reaches the sixth chakra, or ‘upper elixir field’, it is refracted into the various coloured rays associated with each of the other chakras: violet for the sixth (brain/pituitary), sky-blue for the fifth (throat, thyroid), light green for the fourth (heart/thymus), yellow-gold for the third (solar plexus/adrenal), orange for the second (navel/testes and ovaries), and red for the first (perineum/anal and sexual orifices). As this energy descends through the system, it is progressively ‘stepped down’ for use by the progressively lower, slower sub-systems of the human body.
Fig. 2 Major ‘energy gates’ on the human body: crown, brow, heart, navel, perineum, palms and soles
Similarly, when the denser energies of earth are drawn up into the body through the feet and perineum points, they are ‘stepped up’ by the chakras as they ascend toward the head, from the turgid red Fire energy of the sexual and excretory organs to the pure pristine white Water energy of the brain and higher faculties of spirit. Thus the upper three of the seven chakras are related to the primordial spiritual powers and postnatal mental faculties of the mind, while the lower three are involved in the physiological functions of the body, with the central fourth chakra at the heart, which houses human consciousness (Humanity) serving as the pivotal balance between Heaven and Earth. In Taoist internal alchemy, only three of these chakras are generally involved in most practices. These are known as the ‘Three Elixir Fields’ (san dan-tien): the lower centre at the second chakra just below the navel governs vital essence and the body; the middle centre at the third chakra houses the postnatal Fire energy of emotions and ego; the upper centre in the brain is involved in spiritual practice and houses the primordial powers awakened by such practice.
The entire human energy system constitutes a ‘subtle organizing energy field’ (SOEF), a dynamic force field that organizes the energies and elements within it into the integrated organic systems required to sustain any form of life. In humans, for example, the SOEF organizes the atomic elements and energies into the form of the human body according to the design contained in the master template of DNA. Such energy fields are associated with all living organisms and represent the only force in the universe that resists the law of entropy, i.e., the dissolution of all compound matter. These living energy fields therefore sustain organic life in material form, but only for as long as they maintain a state of dynamic polarity and constantly recharge and rebalance themselves by resonating in synchronicity with higher force fields, such as planets, stars and galaxies. Chi-gung is a way of harmonizing the human energy field with these higher force fields, thereby recharging the microcosmic human system with the power of the macrocosmic fields of the universe. This is somewhat akin to recharging the batteries of a cordless appliance by plugging it into a constant electrical power source.
Another way in which the human system transforms the energies it assimilates through chi-gung practice is by virtue of what is known in Western science as the ‘piezoelectric effect’. This refers to a unique property possessed by all crystalline structures, whereby any sort of vibratory or wave energy applied to a crystal structure is transformed into electromagnetic pulses. The human body contains a variety of tissues with crystalline structures within their matrix, particularly bone, connective tissue and the electrolytes in certain bodily fluids. These crystalline structures have the capacity to transduce various types of high-frequency wave energies to which they are exposed, such as light and sound, producing specific electromagnetic pulses that are conducted by the meridians and nerves and utilized by various organs and tissues of the body. This is the mechanism by which mantra, music and various sacred syllables may be used to balance and heal the body: as the sound waves vibrate through the body, crystalline structures within the tissues transform them into pulsed currents that are then conducted to various organs and glands, depending on the frequency and amplitude of the incoming wave signal. Chi-gung opens the human system to some of the highest bands of wave energy in the universe, which are transformed within the body to produce healing energy pulses that rebalance the whole system and can be used both to cure and prevent disease and heal specific organs. The piezoelectric effect is one of the most distinctive and important aspects of chi-gung as a method of health care and life extension.
Thus the Harmony of Heaven and Humanity is achieved by tuning the microcosm of the human energy system with the macrocosmic energy fields of ecosystems, the solar system, stellar systems, galactic systems and so forth, thereby maintaining a state of dynamic polarity that keeps all functions in the body in perfect balance. If such a state is sustained by daily practice, the imbalances that give rise to physical disease in the body cannot occur, and health and longevity are the result. This is the reason that the sages and mystics of ancient China devoted so much time and attention to the study of cosmic forces, cyclic changes of nature, planetary and stellar influences, geomantic force fields of earth, and other factors that influence the human energy system. They also developed specific practices to harness these forces and harmonize them with human energies, and among these practices, chi-gung became the primary method for achieving the Harmony of Heaven and Humanity that serves as a foundation for physical health, long life and spiritual awareness, ‘on Earth as it is in Heaven’.
The Rhythmic Cycles of Nature and the Cosmos
Everything in nature and the cosmos, from the atomic to the galactic and from single cells to complex organisms, operates according to natural rhythms and regular cycles determined by the universal laws of energy. These laws, and the cyclic transformations and organic rhythms of life to which they give rise, are known as the ‘Tao’, the eternal ‘Way’ of the universe and the great ‘Path’ of life. ‘Those who pattern their lives in accordance with the Tao, live long,’ states an ancient Chinese text. ‘Those who go against it, perish early.’
One of the most ancient Chinese systems for calculating the cosmic cycles and natural rhythms of Heaven and Earth in order to harmonize them with human affairs and utilize them for health and longevity is known as the ‘Ten Celestial Stems and Twelve Earthly Branches’. The Ten Celestial Stems refer to radiant astral force fields that transmit rays of cosmic energy down to earth and into the human energy system from the planets of the solar system. Like the ancient cosmology of Egypt and India, the classical Taoist tradition of China cites the existence of ten rather than nine planets in our solar system, and recent astronomical observations seem to confirm the presence of the ‘missing’ tenth planet, which is said to orbit the sun in a broad ellipse on a different plane from the other planets. Many of the mysterious phenomena and inexplicable shifts of energy currently experienced within our solar system and on our planet are attributed by some astronomers to the imminent return of this tenth planet into closer orbit to the sun, which will also bring it into close proximity to the earth, triggering some major shifts in the earth’s electromagnetic field.
The Ten Celestial Stems thus refer to the ‘arteries’ through which the energies of the ten planets, including the earth’s own forces, enter into and influence the human energy system, and chi-gung establishes the conditions of balance and harmony that permit the human system to resonate in synchronicity with these forces, rather than conflicting with them. This synchronicity allows the chakras and crystalline structures to receive and transform these celestial frequencies into energy pulses that can be used to recharge and rebalance the human system.
The Twelve Earthly Branches refer to the twelve major organ-energy meridiens and their umbilical links to external sources of related earthly energies in nature. The Five Elemental Energies of nature flow through these branches, as do all the other types of energy harvested from the resources of earth, such as food, water, air, colour, flavour, sound and touch. The Twelve Earthly Branches manifest in all sorts of rhythmic cycles of twelve, influencing the balance and functions of the human system and the affairs of human life in many ways – twelve months in a year, the twelve two-hour periods of the day in the Chinese ‘duodecimal’ system of keeping time, the six solid Yin and six hollow Yang organs of the body, the twelve houses of the zodiac, and so forth. Fig. 3 shows some of the most important correlations of the Twelve Earthly Branches and how they might be used to harmonize the human system with the flux of forces represented by time and season. For example, the branch known as chou is related to the liver, and its energy peaks in the month of December and during the hours of one to three in the day. Therefore, if you are practising special chi-gung exercises to tonify liver energy, the best time to harvest that particular energy from the environment is between one and three o’clock in the afternoon, and the most beneficial month for this practice is December.
Fig. 3 The ‘Twelve Earthly Branches’ and their associated hours, months and internal organs
Other pivotal periods of peak energy are the summer and winter solstices, which are the longest and shortest days of the year respectively, and the spring and autumn equinoxes, when the earth’s equator comes closest to the sun in its elliptical orbit through the solar system, making day and night of exactly equal length. These are excellent times to harvest energies from the solar system with chi-gung practice. The nights of the full moon and new moon are also favourite times for practitioners to meditate for prolonged periods, sometimes from midnight until dawn, in order to suffuse their systems with the Yang and Yin aspects respectively of lunar energy.
Certain hours of the day are regarded as being more beneficial than others for chi-gung practice. The hours from midnight until noon are designated as the Yang time of day, while from noon until midnight Yin prevails. In the Chinese duodecimal system of marking time, the hours from eleven p.m. until one a.m. are regarded as one of the best times for internal energy practice, for this is when the prevailing energy of the planet shifts over from waning Yin to ascending Yang. As we have seen, Yang is the active principle of light associated with Heaven, while Yin is related to the more passive, darker energies of Earth. Another prime time for practice is five a.m. to seven a.m., when Yang energy peaks before its descent toward Yin at noon. While chi-gung practice is always effective in balancing and recharging the human energy system, these two times of day provide particularly powerful results.
There are also particular times when adepts are advised not to practise chi-gung, due to adverse astral or planetary conditions or foreboding celestial phenomena. Practising chi-gung at such times imprints the aberrant patterns and negative influences of such inauspicious and unbalanced conditions on the internal energy system of the practitioner, giving rise to extreme imbalances of internal energy that can cause serious ailments and emotional disturbances. For example, Taoists regard eclipses of the sun and moon as extremely inappropriate times to practise chi-gung, because the sudden and untimely warp it causes in the natural flow of solar and lunar energies can result in a similar ‘eclipse’ within the human system. Similarly, Taoist masters advise against practising chi-gung when there’s a comet (‘broom-tail star’) sweeping through the sky, because comets are maverick astral bodies that do not conform to the great cosmic rhythms of the planets and stars, and their fiery presence streaking through the sky disrupts the normal pulse of cosmic energies reaching the earth, distorting the force fields of the sun, moon and Ten Celestial Stems and transmitting their erratic energy patterns to anyone who tunes their systems into the prevailing cosmic conditions by practising chi-gung at such a time. Storms, hurricanes, sweltering heat spells, blistering cold, and any other type of extreme or freak weather conditions are also considered to be bad times for Humanity to synchronize its energies with the forces of Heaven and Earth.
In addition to particularly good and bad times for practice, there are also particularly good and bad places. Certain locations on the planet known as ‘power spots’ (chi-di) can produce remarkably powerful effects in the human energy system when chi-gung is practised there, especially when the practice is performed at particularly auspicious times of the year, month and day. The five sacred mountains of China – Omei Shan, Wu Tai Shan, Tai Shan, Hua Shan and Chung Shan – are such power spots, and for thousands of years Taoist hermits and Buddhist monks have gone to these places to perfect their practices by tapping into the powerful ‘Dragon Veins’ (lung-mai) of energy that are known to run through those hallowed peaks. Indeed, all high wind-swept mountains far from the effluvia of human civilization are regarded as superior places for practice due to the extraordinarily potent energies there, including a very high negative ion count in the air, clarity of light, purity of water, and the strong field polarity that prevails at high altitudes. Some mountains, however, are more powerful than others due to their specific locations relative to the sun, moon, planets, stars and various constellations. Mount Shasta in California and the ‘Red Rock’ mountain in central Australia, Mount Ararat in Iraq and many of the peaks in the Himalaya are other examples of mountains auspiciously located for internal energy work and advanced spiritual practices.
In ancient times, when these matters were much better understood than they are today, all important edifices such as temples and palaces were precisely built on locations that were known to be power spots. These locations were carefully calculated by masters of astronomy and geomancy, so that the buildings constructed on them served as focal points for the powers of Heaven and Earth that converged there. The science of geomancy, known in Chinese as Feng Shui (‘Wind and Water’), was particularly prominent in ancient China, and even today geomancers are routinely consulted prior to constructing office buildings and private homes in places such as Taiwan and Hong Kong, in order to ensure that the flow of the earth’s electromagnetic forces synchronize harmoniously rather than conflict with the energies of the people who live and work in those places. Since temples and palaces as well as imperial tombs and important monuments of the ancient world were all located at places specifically selected as vortices of auspicious astral forces and harmonious earthly energies, today these are still good places to go for practising meditation and other forms of chi-gung.
Although some of the terms and concepts discussed above may strike the uninitiated modern reader as archaic and anachronistic, in fact the principles involved here are perfectly scientific, and they apply as well today as they did when first formulated thousands of years ago. Human civilization may well have changed a lot since ancient times, but the human energy system remains much the same and so do the basic forces of Heaven and Earth. Indeed, even a cursory glance at the modern world suffices to show that humanity has definitely fallen out of synchronicity with nature and the cosmos, and this may well be one of the reasons for the decline in human health and the spiritual discontent that characterize contemporary times. Modern science and technology and the cults of materialism and consumerism have all but annihilated humanity’s organic links with nature, cutting people off from the very source of the energies that sustain life. Therefore chi-gung, which restores one’s links with the natural forces of Heaven and Earth, is even more important today that it was before as a means of cultivating the natural balance and harmony which has always constituted the foundation of human health and longevity, happiness and peace of mind.
Few people today are aware of the insidious effects of the ‘energy pollution’ that prevails throughout the world. The skies are streaked with microwaves, radio waves, radar signals and veil upon veil of artificial electromagnetic field radiation that insulate the human system from its root energy resources and have stultifying effects on human vitality. Compared with the debilitating effects of this invisible energy pollution, the smoke and smog of air pollution which most people worry about is relatively benign, for even the chemically purest air is impotent if it has been stripped of its natural wave energies, its negative ions and its dynamic field forces. Conventional modern medicine, which doesn’t even recognize energy and force fields as factors in human health and disease, is clearly losing the battle against cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases associated with contemporary industrial lifestyles, and one of the reasons may well be its stubborn dependence on chemical and technological approaches, which only further aggravate imbalances in the human energy system. Chi-gung, which is a safe and effective form of ‘energy medicine’, can help the human system to resist the inhibitory influences of artificial energies and negative force fields in the environment and restore the natural balance and harmony in internal and external energies upon which human health depends.
‘My life is in my own hands,’ declared the sage Lao Tze 2500 years ago, ‘not under the control of Heaven and Earth.’ By this he meant that those who learn to practise the principles of the Tao as a way of life can take their lives into their own hands and gain control over the powers of Heaven and Earth. Such a declaration of independence from the ‘powers that be’ can only be made by those who learn to harness the forces of nature and the cosmos to the chariot of human life and hold the reins of power firmly in their own hands. To do this, one must first liberate one’s body from unhealthy habits and self-destructive appetites instilled by society, free one’s energy from the tyranny of stormy moods, egomania and emotional turmoil, and release one’s mind from the shackles forged by ignorance, aggression and desire. Chi-gung unites body, energy and mind in a balanced state of harmony with the higher forces of the universe and the positive powers of nature and activates the internal alchemy of ‘mind over matter’, thereby allowing the practitioner to cultivate conscious command over the wild forces of animal instinct and insatiable desire that drain the energies of so many people these days. Chi-gung taps directly into the inexhaustible energy resources of the universe and channels them into the reservoirs of the human energy system, and in doing so, it also opens a spiritual gate that restores the human spirit’s primordial links with the greater wisdom and compassion that guide the creative power of the universe at its source. Harmony with the wisdom and power of the universe, or ‘Heaven’, is the key to health and longevity on Earth and the door to peace and happiness for Humanity.