Volume 2, Track 5
My good friend Professor Huang was one of the first to bring T’ai Chi Ch’uan here to America, long before some of the more publicized teachers. On Saturday afternoons in Los Angeles, he gave a wonderful four-hour course on Taoism, the type of thing not available anywhere else in this country, and only eight or nine people attended.
It’s much easier to sell the ersatz than to give away the Real. I was one of the fortunate ones who attended these sessions.
One time, I had reason to benefit from Professor Huang’s vast experience. I had met an unusual Tibetan yogi who was Russian by birth. He had spent long years in Tibet and had a few close disciples who evidently supported him. One time, he showed me a series of 20 photos taken automatically at time intervals.
As he sat cross-legged and went into samadhi, the super-conscious state that only the Masters attained to in meditation, the first couple of pictures showed him clearly, obviously oblivious to the camera. But as the series progressed, he became more and more indistinct as the photos began to be filled with radiant light, apparently emanating from his body. Near the end of the series, his form had entirely disappeared, and the camera caught nothing but bright light. He had become invisible.
I was quite astonished by the pictures and was inclined to be a little suspicious of the yogi. So, I asked Professor Huang if they could have been faked. He smiled reassuringly and shook his head in the negative. “One time in Formosa (now Taiwan),” he said, “a friend of mine who had become an advanced T’ai Chi Ch’uan instructor, gave an exhibition for a large group of spectators. One of them filmed the 40-minute performance, snapping pictures at regular intervals. When the photos were developed, we were all surprised to see a rising bluish light coming from just below the navel, the spot known as tan t’ien to martial arts practitioners.”
This violet blue light apparently coincided exactly with what I usually saw in meditation, sometimes in the third eye region of the forehead, and is the color of prana, or Chi, the universal energy. One Indian yoga refers to it as the Blue Pearl. Perhaps this color of energy is the reason the sky appears to be blue to us.
I never saw the Tibetan Yogi again, so I was not able to tell him about the light coming from below the navel of the T’ai Chi Ch’uan teacher. I had a similar experience many years ago when I rented a small house on the Monterey Peninsula. This was before the inception of T’ai Chi Chih and I was practicing T’ai Chi Ch’uan in my backyard. A friend of mine entered the yard unnoticed during the practice and stood quietly observing it for about half an hour.
When I had finished, he surprised me by suddenly speaking, saying, “I saw blue light all around you.” This experience has recurred several times since then, and in an ashram in Tecate, Mexico, a very psychic German woman added that she also saw Chinese [people] all around me.
Many times, a teacher will hear that he has come to a student in dreams with a healing effect. The phenomenon of light emission often accompanies such a visitation. I have had that experience with my original Indian teacher, and in a dream, je also referred to the karma that I had accumulated from past actions through many lives. There is much that seems strange in this universe of sound and light.
Yogis are, of course, strict vegetarians. Aside from not eating flesh, no leather is worn, eliminating belts and shoes, and neither woolen blankets or clothing is tolerated. All these pursuing liberation strictly follow these rules, which supposedly also include the phase of brahmacharya that says the speaker must be completely continent, so that the ojas or semen never leaves the body.
All yoga begins with Yama and Niyama, the first containing all the don’ts, and the latter the do’s, such as attitudes. No yogi would knowingly eat an onion as it is a food that excites the emotions, as do Indian curries and other heavily spiced dishes. Yet I know that some yogis smoke ganga and marijuana-like weed, and I have been friendly with a few who would sneak off an occasional cigarette. At Lakshman Jhula and other places in the Himalayan foothills near Rishikesh, one can buy a single cigarette. I have never been as far north as the heavy snow and ice country around Gangotri, but I would wager that one could buy a cigarette and perhaps some ganga up there, too.
More puzzling to me is the animal skin on which the guru sits in order to protect their own vibration. Practically all those I have come in contact with have either deer or tiger skins on which to sit, supposedly taken from animals that died naturally. A little skeptical that one might just have stumbled on a dying tiger, I asked one guru’s disciple about how the animal died. “Well, they might have helped him a little bit” was the answer.
To listen to Justin reading Spiritual Stories of the East, click here.