Nei Kung: The Secret Teachings of the Warrior Sages

INTRODUCTION

There was once a man in China who liked pictures of dragons. His clothing and his furniture were therefore accordingly adorned with dragons. This deep affection for their kind was brought to the attention of the Dragon Lord, who one day sent a real dragon to stand outside the man’s window. It is said that he promptly died of fright.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo¹

Each of us lives within the confines of our individual reality. This is our choice; we choose to live in such a manner—with the same beliefs of what is real and what is not as those often dictated to us from birth. Our society certainly exerts its influence on our behavior, limiting us within its predefined systems and within what it perceives as common sense. Few people are above this. Our dreams, however, unrestricted by society’s whims and the binding chains of narrow logic, often soar above these confines. We are then exposed to a different reality, a place where our innermost hopes and desires are free to express themselves. You see, we have nothing to lose in this new reality. We tell ourselves, This is just a dream, and so are free to live as we truly wish. Protected by our private curtains, free from retribution, we dance out our hopes and aspirations, our innermost fears, within our own minds.

As a species, we have not always been so submissive. Primitive man was free to explore his world without the constraints of a rigorously mechanized society to bind him; he was free to investigate his earth and discern its shape without preconception. The realm of dreams and that of the physical were not so far apart; indeed, the shaman, whose job it was to sojourn into the world of dreams and twilight, was an integral component of society. One could say that primitive man used his dreams as an extension of his five better-known senses. Even today, however, the dreams that dance in our subconscious mind can take shape in the physical world. Progressing as we do through life, we frequently come to find that the myths and legends of humanity, the stories our grandmothers told us, are indeed true. And then what? What do you do when a myth presents itself to you in the flesh? What do you do when a quaint folk belief, accepted by your ancestors but denied by our modern day, knocks at your door? Do you run away? Do you have a heart attack and collapse?

I myself do not. Never having used drugs and being healthy in all respects, I do not doubt the testimony of my own senses. I do not run away. I do not hide. Nor am I afraid, for fear of ridicule, to share with others the revelations I unearth. Part of me is a warrior, you see, and loves a good fight—and as anyone who has given one knows, an academic presentation often turns into a good fight, played with the mind rather than with the fists, and against multiple adversaries at that.

Welcome then, once again, to my world. It is a place where there are no limits, where whatever once had shape and form in the history of humanity has found a home. My world revolves around that forgotten part of our soul—that forgotten side of ourselves—that has been trod upon for reasons of control and domination, I believe, for the last four millennia of our development. What exactly is the forgotten side of ourselves? It is that portion of our heritage that is scoffed at as superstition or make-believe today. It is that part of our innermost being that quietly acknowledges aspects of reality we know to be true, yet hesitates to openly acknowledge them for fear of ridicule. It is our inner connection to those archetypal aspects of existence that primitive or less modern cultures continue to embrace, but that we Westerners look upon as quaint, or backward, or even as (shudder) neat.² It is that side of ourselves that exists with open access to all that may defy our world’s ideas of logic and reason.

In 1994 I saw a documentary on television that changed my life forever. Called Ring of Fire: East of Krakatoa, and produced by the brothers Lorne and Lawrence Blair in 1988, the film described their experiences in the Indonesian archipelago. Central to the documentary was a brief sequence with a shy and somewhat reclusive Chinese-Javanese acupuncturist who performed wonderful things, unbelievable things, for the camera. He demonstrated his full mastery of the phenomenon of ch’i, or bioenergy, by generating an electrical current within his body, which he used first to heal one filmmaker of an eye infection, and then to set a newspaper on fire with his hand.

Ring of Fire caused thousands to seek out this individual in pursuit of instruction; I was one of the successful ones. In the book The Magus of Java, I described my initial encounter with this master, whose true identity I have hidden behind the pseudonym John Chang (though John really is his name, and so is Chang, after a fashion).³ After many trials and tribulations, he finally accepted me as his student, and I have since been privileged enough to witness phenomena that most people can only dream of. In my years of study with John Chang, I have experienced pyrogenesis, telekinesis, levitation, telepathy, and things even more exotic. I have spoken with spirits and can testify to their reality. Equally important, I have learned my own teacher’s story, and have been given permission to publish it. John Chang is a direct heir to the lineage of the sixth-century B.C.E. sage Mo Tzu, who was Confucius’s greatest rival. His discipline, called the Mo-Pai, was, until now, little known in the West.

The method through which these incredible abilities are arrived at is called, in Chinese, nei kung, or inner power. It is the equivalent of the Hindu-Buddhist practice of kundalini yoga, though nei kung involves a martial art and martial practice. Central to the discipline is the transformation of sexual energy into pure unadulterated power, a force that the practitioner can use at will. The cauldron in which this formidable elixir is brewed is called the dantien (elixir field) in Chinese, and is a bioenergetic nexus located four fingers below our navel.

This second book of mine, in many ways part two of The Magus of Java, is not so much about my master, though you will find him weaving himself in and out of these pages. Rather, this book is about how his teaching opened my mind and senses and enabled me to perceive the forgotten side of ourselves. It is by far a more scholarly—and more practical—book than the first one. This is a study guide written for those who were excited enough by The Magus of Java to pursue further instruction (though I am hoping it will stand on its own as a literary effort) and for those who, regardless of their familiarity with The Magus of Java, wish to learn more about nei kung.

As I have grown in my knowledge of the Mo-Pai tradition, I have discovered that teachings similar to those of the Mo-Pai once had a home all around the world; I have found evidence of nei kung techniques and references to yin and yang energy in almost every ancient culture examined by modern archaeology. It would seem that these teachings endured in China as fossilized versions of what was once universal in distribution. My ambition, then, is that they once again find a home in every country, in every city, in every small village around the globe. I hope to begin with you, the reader; I hope to convince you, through these pages, to undertake a regular meditative discipline, a regimen whose scope you may choose at will and tailor to your own personality and aspirations. For it is meditation, in the end, that is the key that opens the door to the forgotten side of ourselves.

I fear we have become unbearably arrogant, you see. Confident as gods in the technological progress we have made, we scoff at the men and women who were our ancestors. Oh, we admire the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China. We marvel at the cave drawings and sculptured bison in the Paleolithic caves of France. We delight in achievements and say, I wonder how they managed that with the technology of their time. In essence, we are patronizing them; we consider ourselves superior. We deny the full spectrum of what they themselves believed in. We do not seek to understand them, these people who were our forefathers; we do not seek to discover why they made the choices they did, what they had seen, what knowledge they possessed that was different from our own. It is from our own standpoint that we try to reach them, ever judgmental. We deny their world, and try to refashion and study it based on our own. What nonsense!

People are ever practical, especially under conditions where survival is an issue, and life in earlier times was something one had to struggle for on an almost daily basis. Ancient peoples, then, cultivated belief because they saw that there was pragmatic gain in doing so. Since having been accepted as John Chang’s student, it dawned on me that every myth and legend of humanity probably has a basis somewhere in fact. For example, for centuries scholars thought that Homer’s Troy was a myth, a story concocted by a blind poet—until a German merchant with more pathos than scientific knowledge stumbled onto her ruins through sheer persistence. John Chang’s paranormal abilities are real; thousands of people throughout the world can step forward and testify to that fact. How many other myths and legends are true, hidden in the leaves, silent and waiting for a dedicated seeker to find?

I cannot speak for all of them, though I would like to believe that there are yeti and four-hundred-year-old yogis living in the Himalayan mountains, as I have been told by Tibetan monks. I personally believe in all manner of spirits, ghosts, and goblins—yes, sometimes it is our nightmares that take shape as well. But meeting such beings is not easy or common; the odds are one in ten thousand or more. Usually, our imagination gets carried away, influenced as it is by cinema and literature, and we believe that something extraordinary is happening when in fact our subconscious mind is tricking us.

Ultimately, we believe in the fantastic because we want to believe, because we have a need to believe; the forgotten side of ourselves is ever awake within us, calling to us from fields of dreams. Because our consumer-oriented society has made life mundane and stripped the magic from our existence, we desperately desire an alternative. Social precepts, for the present, however, dictate that we must ignore these whispers of our past, that we must continue to forget that part of ourselves. In truth, it would be just as easy for an individual to saw off an arm or a leg caught in a trap. This part of ourselves is written into our DNA; we cannot walk away from it. In the end, ignoring our innermost voice leads to desperation, and it is this desperation that proves to be our undoing, for once desperate, we are no longer pragmatic in our pursuits. Not being practical is dangerous—knowledge accumulated over millennia becomes trivialized and people wind up living in fairy tales.

In truth, finding our forgotten side is not easy and often requires the fortitude of a warrior. It can be frightening—compound this natural phobia with the added factor of a multitude of frauds and hucksters preying on the innocent and you will understand that you must tread very, very carefully. In the Orient, where masters secretly coexisted with Western-style development until this past generation, things were much easier to discern: While there were many frauds, true masters were known by reputation and were widely respected. The regularly accepted practice of challenge-matches saw to this—frauds were afraid to raise their ugly heads for dread of being challenged by a true master. Today, duels being rigorously frowned upon by the legal system, this is no longer the case, and even in the East, prospective students must be ever wary of clever swindlers. The forgotten side of ourselves is, in short, dangerous turf, and requires a very special type of individual to traverse; this person must be willing first and foremost to face him- or herself—and most people shy away from just that.

I cannot speak for every myth, for every circumstance that each of us may have encountered; I can only speak for myself. In fact, each of us, in the end, speaks only for ourselves. This book, then, is my personal journey, my individual sojourn into the forgotten side. Please enjoy it. In some places the text may seem complex and some pieces may seem to hang separately from others, but I encourage you to stick with it—I have two reasons for presenting this book in its chosen format. The first is that I want to impart to the reader a portrait of what my life and training, and those of my students and friends, are like in my native Greece. Of its own nature, painting such a portrait is a complex task. The second is that I am obligated by vows I have given to teach cryptically, and so am laying out pieces of the puzzle as I go along. It is up to the reader to assemble these pieces into the larger picture; I hope each and every one of you is successful.

Finally, I return to the dragon mentioned at the very beginning of this introduction. Desiring something and finding it are two altogether different things, coming to terms with a miracle another matter entirely. This is where fortitude of spirit exhibits itself. Should a dragon, then, happen to come along on a bright morning to stand politely outside your window, his scales glistening in the sun, don’t be afraid. Rather, invite him in for tea. You will never forget the experience, and may be surprised to discover that he will enjoy your company as well. I believe, in the end, that dragons and their like miss us almost as much as we miss them.

Chapter 1

WHISPERS FROM THE PAST

. . . o’er Delphi’s long deserted shrine,

where, save that feeble fountain,

all is still.

George Gordon, Lord Byron

I was standing on a mountaintop, screaming up at God.

Six years had passed since I met the Magus of Java, John Chang of the Mo-Pai, and had been accepted as his student. Six years, and during that time my life had changed completely. I had become a much wiser and well-balanced person, of that there could be no doubt. But I was also a much more somber individual than I had been. There is nothing like ignorance to keep a man happy. I had dispensed with it in search of knowledge and was paying the price—life was a constant struggle between old cravings and new yearnings. The path followed by my master was a difficult one and would make my own life austere should I choose to follow it to completion.

When I first started the Mo-Pai training I had all the enthusiasm of the neophyte and that ardor had carried me along for many years. It was after advancing rapidly along the path that I faltered for the first time, and picked myself up, and walked farther, and faltered again. I came to realize that all such disciplines are, in the end, motivated by one of two things: either a profound love for God or a profound hatred for a given individual or group of individuals. There seemed to be little room to maneuver between these two extremes. The training is very difficult and unending; it required withdrawing from society, if only in part, to be able to meditate and perform the necessary psychophysical energetics. Nei kung training operates on the molecular level and actually modifies the DNA of the trainee. It is dangerous and demanding—you must sacrifice material ambitions for the sake of spiritual ones. There is no way around this.

I didn’t know how to handle it. As for my motivations, my feelings for God were mixed and I didn’t really hate anyone so terribly. I was stuck in the middle, wondering what quirk of destiny had set me on this path.

Continuously harnessing my sexuality was no great joy, either, and much of nei kung centers on changing sexual energy to spiritual and physical power. I had no pretensions about not liking society and everything in it. A pretty girl will always turn my head, I like to drink and smoke cigars, and I can spend whole days slothfully watching television. In truth, I am lazy by nature and hate getting up in the morning. All in all, hardly the stereotype of the dedicated yogi, you will agree. But the training wouldn’t let me go. It ran my life, and there was no escaping it.

I want to sell everything I own, turn my ancestral home in the mountains into a hotel, and live and train up there for the rest of my life, I advised John during one of my trips to Indonesia.

If you had told me that last month, I would have said go ahead and do it, he said. But now, I don’t know.

Why not?

"Last week I went into meditation and asked my master¹why none of my students had managed to combine yin and yang in their dantien² and finish Level Four."

Grandmaster Liao, John Chang’s teacher, had died in 1962, but his consciousness was still accessible to my own master somewhere beyond space-time.

What did he say?

He said that this level of power is a gift granted by such laws as govern the Universe, and is not subject to individual human will. It is a part of a person’s aura.

I was