THE TAO AND BRAHMAN. Edited talk to a Chinese Group.

Tony O'Clery.

As previously mentioned, in the Chinese Culture that there are various Gods, as there are in the Indian Culture and many diverse others. Christians have their Patron Saints which is essentially the same thing. Brahman is T'ai-chi, Tai Hsu, Tai I, T'ien, The Tao or The Way.

He is motionless yet is the means of all motion. He is Formless yet appears to have a form. He is the Yin and the Yang which are contained within Him but at the same time He is beyond them. He is The Self.

From The Tao; comes Yin and Yang,

then k'un the feminine principle,

and ch'ien the male principle,

then Ming or life principle from Yin,

and Hsing or human nature from Yang,

then P'O,the lower spirit from Yin,

and Hun,the higher spirit from Yang,

at death P'o becomes Kuei and Hun becomes Shen, hopefully.

Then comes Ch'i from Yin, and Ching from Yang.

Life, or (Ming), and Consciousness, (Hui), when unified are the Tao. (Hsing,or human nature is part of Hui.) (1)

It is all about unifying everything within consciousness and rising to be God. In actual reality all is one, but if you believe in Gods then for you there are Gods. The various heirarchies in the universe are as real as you are, and Who are You? Koham-------Soham!

There are many Gods/Spirits to whom one can direct prayers, and if one directs the prayer to the wrong form it is ignored, for the address is incorrect. There is no point in asking for rain from the God of Health and Splendour.

A Saint is not like this, He is not here to grant worldly boons, although He sometimes does if it helps spiritual not material progress. He will give you what you need not what you want. "God does not come down as Descent to relieve individuals of their troubles and sorrows. Difficulties and troubles come in the natural course as a consequence of past actions. The Divine comes as a Saint or Bhodisattva, only to teach mankind the truth about Love (Prema). It is love and sacrifice which make man divine

For a prayer to reach God it must have three qualifications; firstly it must not be motivated by personal desire, secondly it must emanate from unselfish love, and thirdly it must come from pure hearts.

A Saints comes to show the way to Liberation, His miracles are just His calling card, and He uses them to encourage people as well.

The whole reason for is for us to purify our minds or Spirit Body, in Taoist terms, in order that we may progress on the road to Moksha or Liberation. If we don't get liberation in this life lets at least have a good death and go to a High Heavenly Plane, not end up in the lower Bardos. Or even taking birth too quickly in a low family or condition.

We must work for a Chin-Tan or Golden Ball or Golden Flower, which is Kundalini of course. We must become Bangaroo or "Golden One,"which is similar to Chin-Tan. Kundalini rises naturally in a purified subtle body or Sukshma deha.

In Vedanta Yoga there are three bodies; the shtula deha, or gross body, the sukshma deha, or subtle body, and the karana sarira, or causal body. These contain five kosas or sheaths the Annamaya or food, the pranamaya or vital energy, the manomaya or mind, the vijnanamaya or intellectual awareness, and finally the anandamaya kosa or bliss sheath.

The initial three anna, prana, and manomaya, food vital and mind, correspond roughly with the p'o, which becomes the kuei at death. The energy is heavy ,turbid, and full of desires, anger, and is also sombre and moody.

The higher two sheaths, vijnanamayakosha, or awareness, and the anandamayakosha, or bliss, correspond with the Hun, which hopefully becomes the Enlightened Shen at death or a Deva. If one is realised it becomes The Tao itself. For the Shen is the Tao but is ignorant of this fact.

If one has a purified spirit body or kosas, Buddhi, the Hun rises up to the heaven planes and becomes Shen. While the P'o becomes Kuei and sinks down and eventually disintegrates. This doesn't mean there is no Shen just that it is not pure or manifested, it is still potential.

If one has not developed a purified body or Buddhi then the the entity, on death, does not recognise the "Clear Light" of Moksha. Therefore it does not rise, due to the pull of the desires and confusion in the unpurified lower bodies, or P'O. As it doesn't have a purified spirit body, or Chin-Tan, or is not a Bangaroo, it does not become a dweller in higher heavens but dwells in the lower realms, consciously or unconsciously until rebirth takes place.

There are many levels in the after life. There is the concept of seven Astral and Seven Mental planes, three of the mental planes are formless, and then the purely spiritual planes. The lower Astral, and border plane, are the home of the hungry ghosts or Pretas. These are all mental constructs of course and exist in our own minds, and different peoples give them different names.

You won't go to a High Heaven if your Spriritual Awareness is not to that level. For you to call on Jesus/Kuan Yin or any God form, at death your mind must be full of Him/Her all the time: We all must do Japa! It won't be easy to remember Him at death if you haven't remembered Him in your lifetime. Some people die and don't even know that they have died!

It is not just enough to do good we must also raise our awareness. This has nothing to do with human intelligence and knowledge, which is just ignorance or Avidya really, even if one is a so-called genius. Awareness is Spiritual Intelligence or the rise of True Consciousness. Awareness is being sensitive and compassionate, which involves thinking about other sentient beings, whether they be a man or a mouse. We must all do the Gayatri Mantra! Or something similar.

This is all part of the purification process, or "Chai", that we are all to go through. There is a purification text, from China ,which includes vegetarianism called "San-p'ien chai-fa" by Liu Hsing-ching.

We have to develop Premabhakti for that is the easy way, and Bhakti has stages of growth just as the human body itself does. It too starts out with Form and ends in Formless Surrender. Love becomes Love!

There are different types of humans and they are;

1)Human Animal,

2)Aspiring Human Being,

3)Human Being,

4)Divine Human.

What applies to a human animal does not apply to a Seeker or Aspiring Human Being, although it should.

The human animal has the same character as any animal. It eats, sleeps, mates and defends and is concerned with the acquisition of territory, possessions and the satisfaction of desires. Even the birds, dogs, and monkeys acquire things and are ruled by the senses and desires, as are the human animal. As the predator does so the human animal does, it kills and eats other animals for sport and food, the difference being that humans act with full knowledge.

This goes back to the fact we have been animals in many previous lives and we still carry the traits with us today. Even worse, many of us, as spirit entities, descended into animals millions of years ago, before the human ape was formed, and we perverted the animal instincts and nature for our own desires and lusts. We even formed, monstrosities and mixture animals like sphinxes and pans ,and this condition did not end until fairly recently.

Take for example the yakshas and rakshasas in the Ramayana. It is said the Yakshas had deep holes for eyes and no noses. Then there is Hanuman and Ruksharaj the ape, who is the mother of the Sugriva clan. They were still treating mixtures, and Yakshas in Eygpt 11,000 years ago, and this was the last of them except perhaps for "Bigfoot, Sasquatch or the Yeti". Most humans alive today are probably recent mixtures or animals and still have the animal awareness to a greater or lessor extent. It is interesting that religion only evolved within the last ten thousand years, as a means of training unaware minds, before that there was spirituality for the humans and nothing for the monstrosities and mixtures. There were always hordes of monstrosities and mixtures, as is evidenced by the unaware billions of human animals today. On Atlantis there were about seventy million humans and many mixtures, it is believed.

Also Rama said he would return to rescue, from ignorance the hordes of Yakshas and Rakshasas that served Ravana. Who was perhaps the King of Atlantis but had his capital on a now sunken island in the Indian Ocean. That in fact is many of us today!

This sad and deplorable condition, of being a human animal, is the lot of many so called highly intelligent persons. Most people live mainly in the Manomaya Kosha, or Mind Sheath, just as the animal does. There is barely a glimmer of true intellect or the Vijnanamaya Kosha. There is no Chin-Tan, no Bangaroo, no Golden One.

This Vijnanamaya sheath is of discrimination, the ability to see what is wrong and what is right, what is real and what is unreal. This is awareness, an awareness that can't turn a blind eye to the suffering of an animal, or the suffering of so many starving and sick humans.

So lacking this "developed awareness sheath", the human animal goes on living a very shallow life dominated by desires and negative qualities and only concerned with its own self first.

Any manifestation of the intellect at all, is all very much on a mundane level and serves really to enhance the lower mind sheath and thats all. Even such people as professors, artists and scientists can still be only human animals.

The Aspiring Human being tries essentially to put into practice of Shanti or Peace, and Ahimsa or Non-Violence.

People should try to avoid Intoxicants, Smoking, Meat Eating, and Gambling. Let us look at the violation of Ahimsa due to meat eating for example, for the animal has to be cruelly treated and killed. Then Dharma is violated for eating meat is not for human beings, Truth is violated by the peversion of Sathya to Egoistic ends, Shanti is violated by the combination of pain and terror we have caused the animal, and the bad vibrations released. Prema is violated because instead of loving the animal we have perpetrated a violent act on it, and we have peverted our own Dharma. There is no Prema there!

So to become an aspiring human being it is helpful to avoid eating meat, for if we eat meat we develop animal tendencies and diseases.

It is interesting that Ghandiji ate unfertilised eggs when he was sick. I suppose they are just protein like milk products, yogurt and cheese. We should cultivate a Sathwic diet, avoiding too many onions and chillies and other foods that cause a disturbance in the mind.

Food is everything that we take in through our senses, not just our stomaches, so we have to be careful.

So there is a lot of work we have to do to purify our koshas or spiritual body.

We in fact have lived infinite lives for although there is no beginning there can be an end. It is not God that allocates our lifetimes it is ourselves, our own Karma. We only ever meet ourselves in these lives, it is ourselves that punishes and rewards us. For we are God but don't realise it, when we do we, will realise that it was all a dream. Karma or Action creates a memory, which in turn creates a desire, which creates another Action. So Karma is memory of good or bad action and it must be balanced. This is the reason for re-birth. It is never ending and it is no use pruning the tree, we must dig it out at the roots.

The next stage of Human Being is reached through absolute surrender to His Will and becoming a True Devotee and Jivanmukta, that is liberated whilst still in the body. This is Bangaroo or Chin-Tan, The Golden One. It is also" no-thought" and a risen Kundalini. Kundalini will rise by itself quietly in a True Devotee, for it is unbroken consciousness already.

In the Gita 2:71, it says "The man who sheds all longing and moves without concern, free from the sense of "I" and "mine", he attains peace."

The last stage is Divine Human like the Buddhas, Bhodisattvas and Karana Janimas/Descents to help all beings to become truly human.

So the practical application of all the teachings is to purify the koshas or spirit body so that at death it will leave by the 'thousand petalled lotus' on top of the head, and gain Union with The Tao or Brahman. Or at the very least through the nose or mouth, so it can enter the spirit world easily and fit there.

For if it is still desireful it will leave through the lower orifices like the lower door of the belly, for it will be confused in the Bardo and not attain a good birth or Liberation.

Worldly people lose the roots and cling to the treetops. This is the reason for purifying oneself. We should surrender to The Lord/Goddess and let Him be the doer, this is Nishkarma karma, or no desire for the result of our actions, therefore the action is God's. If we surrender we are inviting the Lord into our meditation and lives, He carries our load, this is action through non-action, Wu-Wei.

"Be like a new born baby accepting things as they come without distinction. "Lao-tzu. "Be frugal, selfless and still, "Lao-Tzu.

"He who practises The Way or Tao, does less every day, does less and goes on doing less until he reaches the point where he does nothing,--and yet there is nothing that is not done." Chuang-Tzu.

Transmutation takes place in three stages; first of all coarse ching, ch'i and shen have to converted to the subtle stage, then to pure yang-shen or Cosmic Spirit, and then to Void or Ultimate Tao

 THE TAO AND BRAHMAN. Talk to Chinese Devotees 2nd March,1998.Vancouver.

Some of the Chinese Gods,but not all,have come from India,or rather Bharat,probably via Tibet.Some belong to the Chinese Folk Religions,which have become mixed up with everything.Others go back to antiquity ,such as the Pole Star God and the adjacent Star Gods,or The Queen of Heaven or Divine Mother.It is interesting that in the Bhagavata Purana Visnu is symbolically thought of as dwelling in the pole star,Dhruva.Some say that Arcturus is the centre of our universe.(The brightest star in the sky.)In fact no race has earlier God forms than any other,they all happened at the beginning of Man,and all exist in Swami.

However in China,as in India,there is something that is far older than all these later Gods and that is China's own version of Sanathana Dharma or the Ancient Wisdom,The Tao.,which in India is known as Brahman.(Saguna and Nirguna.)This is the Nameless Supreme State of Being,which is also known as "The Self".The pure teaching of The Tao is not different from the non-dualism of Advaita Vedanta,although it is couched in Chinese cultural terms.Sometimes the Tao is referred to as the Mother,which in India is Saguna Brahman or the Devi.Taoism uses the one term to describe all the aspects of the Tao,unlike the Indians who specify names for them.However the egg of Yin-Yang can be identified with the Hiranyagharba of Vedanta,containing the Mahat or Cosmic Ego and Purusha-Prakriti,male and female energies.Out of this egg come the five elements that become creation.

The less pure stages of Taoist Religion are not that different from any other systems of religion though.

This teaching was handed down via the ancient Gobi Civilisation,tens of thousands of years ago and before that even.There has always been Sages and teachers of this knowledge,even from the beginning of life on this planet.This knowledge at one time was extant throughout the world.Even in Britain there were temples as big as football fields,and consisting of nine concentric circles, of one metre wide oaks spaced a metre apart,5,000,or more, years ago.This was a system of Ancient Wisdom, not Shamanism.Most of the wisdom has been lost except for small pockets around the world.Only in India has it been preserved on a large scale and then in rural areas,and Ashrams,and of course in all the scriptural texts.The Communists or Red Flood destroyed most of the outer structure of Ancient Wisdom in China.

Now the Goal of the Tao is to live in harmony with Nature and live wisely whilst working on removing the Ego.The eventual Goal is to return to the Source or Liberation.In other words to expand the consciousness so that it contains everything and in fact is everything.

The way of the Tao can be seen in Nature and in The Natural Forces.Everything seems to evolve by itself naturally surrendered to the Tao.In other words The Way,or Tao,is Dharma itself,which is automatic for Nature.

However Nishkarma Karma is necessary for the different levels of humans.It can be compared to growing effortlessly like a flower(,Wu-Wei).Eventually seeing all and nature as yourself.

Read pages 37,38,39,from Taoism (2)

(1) Richard Wilhelm .."The Secret of the Golden Flower",1962,Harvest Books New York.

(2) John Blofeld,"Taoism",1978,Shambala Publications,Inc,Boulder,Colorado.