dao
.pdf26 Taoist Secrets Of Love
Dr. Beyoihn, a noted endocrinologist, stressed the importance of the hormonal function of semen production: "Sexual hormones are important to our harmonious development. When men abuse the reproductive function, the secretions of the sexual glands are lost. . . resulting in mental and physical weakness, inability to concentrate, and a less tenacious memory."*
Love-making is an internal exercise which helps restore imbalances in bodily chemistry. A moderate amount of sex tends to repair hormonal disturbances, to reduce cholesterol and blood pressure levels. Sexual activity alters the body chemically. The reason this happens is because each gland in the body affects all the others. Thus when sex hormones are stimulated, it stimulates the hormones secreted by the other major glands—adrenal, thymus, thyroid, pituitary, and pineal. The illusion when you are young is that you can stimulate your glands indefinitely, without paying a price for it. Sex seems like a bottomless well of bliss. It is, if you take the trouble to recirculate the sexual hormones within the body instead of repeatedly ejaculating them.
These sex hormones do more than just make you feel good. They literally invade every sphere of your activity and form your personal identity. Recent scientific studies have shown that sex hormones influence the brain's cellular organization. If you are male, then your brain has male stamped on each cell. This is what produces different proclivities in men and women.
Dr. Gunter Dorner, director of the Institute for Experimental Endocronology at Humboldt University in East Germany points out: "The sex hormones . . . don't just suddenly appear out of nowhere at puberty. Nor do they just meander about the body. THEY KNOW WHERE TO GO. The cells that are their targets have already been primed in the womb to respond to the hormones that are now being produced. This is true of the body, of the reproductive organs, heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys. But it is also true of the brain. The tissues, neural circuitry and chemistry of the brain have already been stamped during fetal life by the sex hormones. And the foundations have already been laid for the range of behaviors that will characterize the organism as male or female in adult life."*
*E. Flatto, Warning: Sex May Be Hazardous To Your Health (Arco Publishers 1973).
*Science Digest, September 1983, p. 87.
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These hormonal differences obviously determine many of the qualities in men and women the Chinese have called yin and yang. The Taoist goal of total integration of sexual impulse with the mind begins to make sense even to a western intellectual when the connection between sexual activity, hormonal balance, physical health, and personality are examined together. The evidence for health being powerfully affected by hormonal balance has been well substantiated, and is even now a major topic for cancer researchers in their efforts to understand how the mind and emotions control our immune system. The Taoists would say it is unnecessarily complicated to track each individual microscopic hormone receptor and enzyme in the gene code to fight the hundreds of different types of cancers and diseases that result when our immune system fails.
The Taoists contend the critical factor is simply balance—that when male and female chi energies are balanced in the body, each cell will have the energy to function perfectly, and hormones do their job in making the body machinery run smoothly. This balance of male and female hormones produces a happy personality who lives harmoniously with the world. The specific Taoist practice of sexual energy conservation and transformation is one of many designed to insure that the internal equilibrium of the human energy system is so powerful that no outside force can destroy its inner balance. The Taoists thus see everything, hormones, sex, personality, health, and beyond that, your spiritual destiny, linked inextricably together. That is the working of the Tao, which links the finite ordinary world of a Saturday night date to the explosion of a super nova light years away. The principle of the fusion of energy in both is the same.
In olden times the Taoist secret of secrets was the method of being reborn through a process of giving birth to your new self. When I first learned it I didn't understand it, but later, in studying the endocrine system, I was able to see analogies. I realized that both men and women have the makings of male and female hormones and that, in effect, they are each capable of having intercourse within themselves, and giving birth to a new self.
The most important connection in the male hormone system is between the testicles and the pituitary gland located between the eyebrows, behind the forehead. These glands work together in the transformation of sexual energy, a fact that you will experience
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DIAGRAM 8 |
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Pai-Hui (The Crown) |
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The power of mind control & spiritual |
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center |
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Corpus Callosum |
Skull |
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Thalamus Gland |
Pituitary Gland - |
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Pineal Gland |
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Cavity of the spirit |
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to transform |
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Occipital Lobe |
sexual energy into |
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(The largest cavity to store |
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a refined nectar |
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which is the food |
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sexual energy.) |
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of the spirit. |
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Pons |
Cerebellum— |
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regulates breathing and vision |
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& is the initial storage area |
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of Ching |
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
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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,
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inhibin. When not ejaculated, these hormones go into the blood stream and are carried to every part of the body.
DIAGRAM 9
Pleural Cavities
Diaphram
Peritoneum
Bladder
Sexual Kung Fu fills the cranial cavity with Chi. This overflows & begins filling other body cavities with life-force, retarding the aging process & strengthening the body's immunity to disease.
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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.
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DEATH AND SEX IN THE NATURAL WORLD
" . . . When the living organism, whether vegetable or animal, achieves its aim, which is a new seed, its organism deteriorates."
—Schwaller de Lubicz, The Temple in Man
Nature perpetuates its species through sex. In the male seed she concentrates the parent's essential elements. The theme of parental sacrifice for the offspring is repeated in all life forms, from amoeba to walrus, praying mantis to orchid.
One may readily glimpse the death in generation by considering the Emperor Moth's brief span. This large moth travels many leagues across the countryside in quest of his female: "The famous principle of the struggle for life is here the struggle to give life, the struggle to die. Although they can live three days in quest of the female, they perish as soon as the fertilization is complete."*
Plants, too, are subject to these laws. After a plant goes to seed or bears fruit, it dies or enters a period of dormancy. Gardeners know that a plant prevented from going to seed outlives its more precocious brothers. Most fruit-bearing trees do not produce fruit until they are five or ten years old. During this period they devote their entire biological force to the growth and strengthening of tissue.
Later in their life, plants split their vital force between reproduction and tissue maintenance. When they grow old they need all of their remaining energies for survival: they withdraw power from the sexual sphere and bear no more.
Some male insects may increase their lifespan several fold simply by not spending their seed. One may object that an insect's sex life has no relevance to ours. Yet the insects excel brilliantly in sexual invention and effectiveness. They comprise more than half of the total animal weight on earth. They far surpass human erotic variety. The insects make D.A.F. de Sade, Saint Anthony, and David Bowie look like a troop of boyscouts discovering sex for the first time.
Insects work the web of material life with particular intensity. Their power to impose their definition of life is manifest in their
*Carlos Suares, The Cipher of Genesis (Shambhala 1978).
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numbers, gigantic age and breadth of habitat, garb and custom. Marxist-Socialist deification of the State but weakly mimicks their pitiless genius for collective organization. Rather than staggering them, nuclear war will offer a rare occasion to spin new organs to create an abundancy of new life forms.
In all forms of life the reproductive act exhausts essential energies. The offspring consume bodily stores of nutrition to get a grip on their new life. Vital organs suffer the most depletion because they contain the densest concentration of nutrients. Among humans, the female sacrifice of her bodily energy is unavoidable in the passage to birth. The male, likewise, must surrender the potency of his seed at least once to fertilize the female ovum.
Nature warrants the sacrifice worthwhile, for it fulfills her goal of multiplying life. She intends the old to make way for the new. But amongst all material creatures, only man has the force of will to oppose Mother Nature. "Not distance, not the difficulty of the journey, not the danger of approach foils instinct (in the animal kingdom). In man, who sometimes has the force to escape the sexual commandments, disobedience may have fortunate results.
Chastity in a human being can function like a transformer, changing unused sexual energy into intellectual or social energy. Among animals, this transformation of physiological values is impossible."*
It is the very possibility of transforming our instinctual and essentially animal sexual energies into something higher that makes us human, and potentially divine. The failure to direct our sexual energy upward is a failure to fulfill our deepest human potential. That is why unconscious sex with ejaculation of the male seed is a kind of mini-death seen so often in the plant and animal kingdoms. Two hundred to five hundred million sperm die upon a single ejaculation. The expenditure of subtle energy is even much greater than these huge numbers suggest.
If this spent seed leads to any kind of rebirth in the man, or in the woman, receiving new life, this loss or death is in harmony with nature. But without transforming these mini-deaths into a sharing, a love, a child, or a higher awareness of some sort, this act of sex becomes a mere killing of the potential life energy stored in the seed. Perhaps that's the connection between sex and violence.
*Suares, op. cit.
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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