Mantak Chia - The Tao of Immortality: The Four Healing Arts and the Nine Levels of Alchemy

Acknowledgments

The Universal Healing Tao Publications staff involved in the preparation and production of The Tao of Immortality: The Four Healing Arts and the Nine Levels of Alchemy extend our gratitude to the many generations of Taoist masters who have passed on their special lineage, in the form of an unbroken oral transmission, over thousands of years. We thank Taoist Master Yi Eng (White Cloud) for his openness in transmitting the formulas of Taoist Inner Alchemy.

We offer our eternal gratitude to our parents and teachers for their many gifts to us. Remembering them brings joy and satisfaction to our continued efforts in presenting the Universal Healing Tao system. For their gifts, we offer our eternal gratitude and love. As always, their contribution has been crucial in presenting the concepts and techniques of the Universal Healing Tao.

We wish to thank the thousands of unknown men and women of the Chinese healing arts who developed many of the methods and ideas presented in this book. We offer our gratitude to Bob Zuraw for sharing his kindness, healing techniques, and Taoist understandings.

We thank the many contributors essential to this books final form: The editorial and production staff at Inner Traditions/Destiny Books for their efforts to clarify the text and produce a handsome new edition of the book and Nancy Yeilding for her line edit of the new edition.

Thanks to Juan Li for the use of his beautiful and visionary paintings, illustrating Taoist esoteric practices. We wish to thank Colin Drown, Otto Thamboon, our senior instructors Felix Senn and Andrew Jan, and Charles Morris for their editorial work on the earlier edition of this book. For their efforts on the first edition of this book, we thank our Thai production team: Hirunyathorn Punsan, Sopitnapa Promnon, Udon Jandee, and Suthisa Chaisam.

Putting the Universal Healing Tao System into Practice

The practices described in this book have been used successfully for thousands of years by Taoists trained by personal instruction. Readers should not undertake the practice without receiving personal transmission and training from a certified instructor of the Universal Healing Tao, since certain of these practices, if done improperly, may cause injury or result in health problems. This book is intended to supplement individual training by the Universal Healing Tao and to serve as a reference guide for these practices. Anyone who undertakes these practices on the basis of this book alone, does so entirely at his or her own risk.

The meditations, practices, and techniques described herein are not intended to be used as an alternative or substitute for professional medical treatment and care. If any readers are suffering from illnesses based on mental or emotional disorders, an appropriate professional health care practitioner or therapist should be consulted. Such problems should be corrected before you start training.

Neither the Universal Healing Tao nor its staff and instructors can be responsible for the consequences of any practice or misuse of the information contained in this book. If the reader undertakes any exercise without strictly following the instructions, notes, and warnings, the responsibility must lie solely with the reader.

This book does not attempt to give any medical diagnosis, treatment, prescription, or remedial recommendation in relation to any human disease, ailment, suffering, or physical condition whatsoever.

Introduction

After over sixty years of study, practice, and research of the Immortal Tao and Living Tao of the Universal Healing Tao practices, Master Chia is excited to share his insights, discoveries, and observations with his devoted students, instructors, and Taoist practitioners in this book. The long journey of discovering the Tao that Master Chia has taken, starting from his chance meeting as a teenager with his initial Taoist master, Yi Eng (White Cloud), through his young adulthood, marriage, fatherhood, and retiring years, has revealed interesting, informative, and intriguing nuances and subtleties of the Taoist practices. They have evolved into the Universal Healing Tao system, a living organism with its roots in the information and formulas coming from millennia of Taoist masters, reintroduced by Mantak Chia through his world tours to North America, Western and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia and his teaching for over fifty years.

The Universal Healing Tao system will continue to evolve through his thousands of Taoist students and the hundreds of Taoist masters and instructors he has trained. At age seventy-three Master Chia is continuing to tour and has set up a global internet broadcasting station at Tao Garden, his Chiang Mai Universal Healing Tao training facility and health resort, to do live broadcasting around the world on the Tao and its mystical Way. In addition, he will continue to share new formulas to explain and practice the Tao through courses, books, booklets, audios, DVDs, and Chi Cards corresponding to the books, as well as online with his websites: www.universal-healing-tao.com, www.tao-garden.com, and www.mantak-chia.com. Numerous future books will expand the Living Tao, Chi Nei Tsang, Cosmic Healing, and Immortal Tao practices. The Universal Healing Tao system will carry on for millennia to come, to share the understandings and practices of the Tao in over thirty different languages for global understanding.

In the realms of time, human beings have been influenced by mystical schools, religions, governments, and now corporations. They have convinced us to give them our time and energy (essence) for the good of others, but mostly for themselves. They promise they will take care of us or save us. When we give everything to them, we have no time or energy left for ourselves, and in the end we have nothing except their promises. Other systems taught us how to cultivate and grow our energy like a seed into a tree, but after a while they told us they needed our energy for the good of others, and they convinced us to give them our tree for their own use. And other systems even went further, showing us how to grow flowers from our tree, and after the flowers blossomed, they told us to pick them for their beauty and sell them to others.

But the Tao teaches us not only how to plant (root) and grow our seed (energy or essence) into a tree, but also how to sexually cultivate the seed so that it can flower and bear fruit, without losing our essence (original seed). Our tree (cultivated energy) will bear abundant fruit, which we can share with others who are sincere and deserving. Now think: in each piece of fruit that we bear, how many seeds are in it to share? So if we cultivate our original seed in the Tao, instead of giving it away as other systems advise, we are able to share thousands of seeds for the good of others, and never lose our original seed (essence). This is the Way of the Tao that is explained and taught in the Universal Healing Tao system.

To know the Tao is to feel the Tao, and the only way to feel the Tao is to practice the Tao. So the hardest part of the Tao is finding someone who is practicing the Tao and is willing to teach you the Taoist practices so you can feel the Tao. Master Chia has dedicated this book to giving his thousands of students and fellow Taoist practitioners the fine points, emphasis, and correct focus of the Universal Healing Tao practices for their enjoyment and self-discovery. This book gives you a unique perspective and understanding of Master Chias practices and techniques and helps you to find the key meaning of the Universal Healing Tao practices in a simplified way. The book reveals the concept, theory, and purpose of the Tao. It also makes clear why you should practice, how you should practice, and when and where you should practice. From it you will learn where the energy and intention of the Tao originates and where it is going, how you connect with the Tao, and your purpose for being on the earth plane from a Taoist perspective.