A Romanian Spiritual Seeker's Growth: from Scifi Readings to Neidan

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A Romanian Spiritual Seeker's Growth: From SciFi Readings to Neidan

Şerban Toader

Journal of Daoist Studies, Volume 11, 2018, pp. 193-206 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/dao.2018.0009

For additional information about this article https://muse.jhu.edu/article/685866

[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]

A Romanian Spiritual Seeker’s Growth

From SciFi Readings to Neidan

ŞERBAN TOADER

This presents a short biography of a Romanian spiritual seeker, covering his first discovery of the necessity to engage in a spiritual search to the present. The seeker, whom we will call P., first became interested in self- discovery, i. e., in his place and role in the greater scheme of things on this earth, during high school, the trigger being Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune. Later he engaged in yoga practice and eventually came to focus on two forms of Chinese qi practices: internal alchemy (neidan) and the techniques associated with the Yijin jing. My information derives from a series of semi-directed interviews with P., including also one with his wife C., similarly a qigong practitioner, between 2012 and 2014, a total of about seven hours. In addition, I gathered materials when I joined him during three trips to China in 2009, 2013, and 2015, serving as a translator for groups P. had organized.

The Trigger P. started his relationship with Chinese qigong around 1997. By then, he had been a yoga practitioner for nine years, a course initially inspired by reading Frank Herbert’s novel Dune, a classic of science fiction that abounds in mystical elements. Since 1997, P. has traveled to China numerous times to pursue qigong, but his interest in yoga never led him to visit India.

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Born in 1977, P. was about 16 years old when he read Dune and came to realize the importance of spiritual initiation and personal trans- formation. In the book, the main character, a youth named Paul, under- goes some physical and mental training, including also the taking of a certain substance called ’’the spice.” He passes an initiation that opens him to a new reality, one that he had never encountered before. Reading this, P. realized less the necessity of spiritual training than the understanding that human beings typically only use a tiny part of their brain potential. He resolved to pursue the expansion or even full attainment of this potential. Following this, P. began to search for practices that might resemble the training procedures in Dune. He explains,

Then I started to search for any kind of training that looked like the one in Dune. The book contained training procedures that looked very much like those used in yoga.

However, they also included ’’the spice,” maybe matching the pill in external alchemy or possibly resources utilized in internal alchemy, as P. later came to speculate. Even before reading Dune and becoming aware of organized training methods, P. experienced a certain predisposition toward contempla- tion. His home faced the majestic Făgăraş mountains in Transylvania, and he liked to just sit and contemplate, often finding himself feeling as if spiritually being carried away. There were no innate, special abilities or extraordinary states. On the contrary, his health was not at its best. As P. describes it,

I had a problem with my physical body. I was not born healthy, but early, at only eight months. The ventricles in my heart were perforated, oxygen- ated blood mixing with unoxygenated blood. I used to get tired very quickly and I suffered form an aggressive anemia for two years. Therefore, my body constantly forced me to maintain conscious and careful aware- ness. It would not let me ignore it. This, I believe, is a key factor for my later seeking.

Last but not least, P. also mentions that, living in an officially atheis- tic society that did not permit religion to be taught in school, he did not receive any systematic religious education. His parents were not pious

Toader, “A Romanian Spiritual Seeker” / 195 people or church-goers. Only his maternal grandmother provided some religious connection. When P. was four to six years old, before he started primary school, she would read the Bible in its Orthodox Christian ver- sion to him and his siblings instead of bedtime stories. Still, even as a child, P. notes, ’’I do not think I believed in God, nor did I ever think about whether God existed or not. God was an abstract figure, so to speak.” Even after starting to read science fiction, P. did not make any connection to the religious tales of his grandmother. Rather, he came to believe in the existence of a certain God during his yoga phase.

I practiced yoga, taiji, qigong, a little bit of Zen Buddhism, a little bit of martial arts, maybe a little bit of astrology. All these things, in essence, will eventually make you believe there is something beyond matter, beyond the material plane. Yes, I think, this is most interesting, coming to me during adolescence: that there is something beyond matter, above the material level of life.

Another major factor was his physical condition. He started to practice yoga also in order to enhance his health and improve his flexibility, becoming a vegetarian and avoiding all tobacco, alcohol, and caffeine in the process. Soon after reading Dune, P. started to read works on yoga, most im- portantly Paul Brunton’s The Hidden Teaching beyond Yoga (New York, 1959), which reinforced his interest in another level of reality, one beyond that seen with the physical eyes. But, as P. stresses, ’’it was clear for me that such a thing exists, and that it was only a matter of training to attain it.” Nevertheless, it was not merely an intellectual insight, but rather a feeling of familiarity with spiritual training, as if he already be- longed there ’’since the beginning of the world.” This intuition meant a great degree of certainty for P., who considers himself rather a skeptic. A new realm to be explored opened before him despite all sorts of doubts and opposing arguments from his rational mind. P. reread Dune after he came to experience yoga and felt that what he had lived up to that point was ’’in tune” with the episode in the book when ’’the worm and the human become one.” But, he adds, that soon after he stopped reading science fiction, instead turning to works on per-

196 / Journal of Daoist Studies 11 (2018) sonal development, leadership, direct marketing, Daoist practice, and New Age spirituality.

Yoga After first starting yoga privately in his hometown of Cisnădie in 1993, P. moved to Sibiu the next year and to Bucharest in 1995. There he joined a school called Movement of Spiritual Integration into the Absolute (MISA) for a total of nine years (until 2003). Founded by Gregorian Bivolaru, the school was rather cult-like and, in addition to basic yoga, also promoted astrology, free love, and seminal retention. Running counter to Romani- an law, society and politics, the founder eventually faced arrest and trial. However, P.’s main objection to him had less to do with the more tabloid aspects of his biography, but with the fact that Bivolaru did not represent any specific tradition and was not part of a clear spiritual lineage. Instead, he was a self-made guru who creatively and intuitively combined teachings and practices from various schools and relayed them in new and eclectic ways to his students. Still, he offered an excel- lent setting for self-development in his ashrams and camps, helping P. acquire basic Hatha Yoga notions and practices: postures, relaxation, breathing techniques, seated meditations, as well as a relevant vocabu- lary. From here, he moved on to internal alchemy, however, the passage was neither direct nor smooth. As P. explains,

First of all, it was not a direct passage. Instead, there was a hiatus of one year, because I was quite full of everything that involved so-called spiritual readings, a fixed routine or schedule, a specific diet, a certain lifestyle, and so on. Besides, it had become pretty obvious over the last two years that I did not belong with the school any longer. I merely kept going out of inertia.

Eventually P. decided to leave the yoga school, going against the possessiveness clearly expressed by the charismatic leader. As he adds, ’’They were doing and talking about all sorts of things, anything else but yoga, once people had been with them for six or more years.” In fact, P. was seeking development and continuity in his training, pursu-

Toader, “A Romanian Spiritual Seeker” / 197 ing ’’an authentic spiritual practice with a set of exercises able to produce measurable, objective results in one way or another, either internal or external. I could not find them there.” He was willing to learn and try new things, to expand his knowledge of practice, and compare what he had learned with other, different systems. Thus, after a hiatus of about eight months, he began to attend qigong classes in Bucharest and started to read related books, ac- quiring a new set of ideas, including the concepts of meridians, acupuncture points, and qi. To him, as he explains, ’’the system seemed much better structured.”

There where certain clear points, on certain clear lines. Acupuncture and the entire system of energy lines, organs, and meridians are recognized by the World Health Organization. Also, it was linked with homeopathy and looked very interesting to me. So, I said to myself, let’s just see what this qi is all about.

As it turned out, his interest in qi was all he got at the moment, since the qigong classes did not offer very much. Rather, he discovered the same shortcomings he had already fled from: cultic tendencies, sectarian- ism, manipulation, business-oriented motivations, competition in a spiritual market, monopolist tendencies, and more. Being thoroughly disap- pointed, he decided, “I’m done with Romania, I’m heading east!"

Early Qigong Making good on this resolution, P. over the next few years encountered four significant masters: Master Luo in Bangkok, the Magus of Java in Indonesia whose European disciple named D. also taught in Romania, the Shaolin master Jiang, and the Longmen Daoist Wang Liping in China. He first went east in 2004 to attend a one-month retreat with Master Luo in Bangkok. The group consisted of thirty participants, including five from Romania. The training lasted about three hours each day, de- scribed by P. as rather ’’painful yet mostly inefficient.” Nevertheless, Luo was the teacher from whom P. learned of the methods of externalizing qi (faqi 發氣) and through whom he had his first enlightenment experience, making Luo his initiating master (qimeng laoshi 启蒙老师). P. continued

198 / Journal of Daoist Studies 11 (2018) the practice in several more retreats, then moved on, describing his teaching as a form of Daoist-Buddhist fusion, his logo showing the Taiji symbol combined with a Budhist svastika. From D., who happened to participate in one of these retreats in Bangkok, P. next learned about his master, the Magus of Java. D. called him several times, hoping for permission to visit, which was granted. The group went for a short audience, during which the Magus external- ized qi toward them and demonstrated an acupuncture treatment using only qi, activating points not found in standard medical manuals. When asked to provide a chart of these points, the Magus refused, explaining that ’’they should remain inside my mind, because my qi and my faqi are compatible with them.” Besides externalizing qi through his palms, he also showed them a method that worked through the lower abdomen, manifest in a feeling of an electric current through the elixir field. To P., the most interesting as- pect was the Magus’s ability to regulate the intensity of his qi, the way he could make it higher or lower as needed. In contrast, Master Luo could only start and stop his external qi, never regulating the intensity. P. describes the Magus as practicing ’’a certain form of internal alchemy which he called internal practice (neigong), but which is in fact a way of Daoist practice.” P. found the Magus’s power highly credible, especially also since he was seventy years but looked like fifty. P. learned three lessons from him. First, not only are all patients unique, but therapists, too, each work with their own point charts and energetic configurations, creating a perfectly unique relationship between patient and healer. Second, after learning about the existence of qi first from Luo, P. found it confirmed and amply demonstrated by the Magus, realizing that it can not only be emitted through the fingers, but also through the palms, the abdomen, and even the entire body. Third, not all disciples are what they claim. After suspecting D. of ’’spiritual matchmaking” for money while visiting Luo, P. also noticed that the Magus seemed to see him rather as an annoying, unacceptable character, which sharply contrasted with D.’s boasting about his close connection. In other words, it seems that P. became aware of the existence of an international ’’qi industry,” complete with marketing, connec- tions, commissions, networks, and so on.

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Daoism Despite P.’s increasing distrust in D.’s credibility, he joined him for another event, a public conference in Bangkok in 2007 that featured the Shaolin master Jiang Feng (d. 2016), a specialist of techniques associated with the Yijin jing. At this time, Jiang spoke directly to P. and praised his performance. As P. remembers, he was part of a group of twenty, nine- teen of whom the Master asked about their disease. Coming up last, he conversed with P. not about illness, but about personal practice, asking how long he had been training. Jiang, as P. notes, easily saw through people as if using a natural X-Ray scanner, noting internal irregularities, the beginnings of diseases, as well as potential qi growth.

He told me that I was ready and that I should cross the bridge now. How- ever long I would continue to practice, without a real master based on an authentic lineage, I would not be able to advance. That is, he spoke directly to me and told me exactly what I had been looking over twelve years already, in fact since my first yoga class.

P. believes that when a disciple seeks assiduously, a favorable con- text will appear and he will find his true master, who in turn gives ap- propriate signals. For him this happened when Master Jiang invited him to become his disciple. As a result, P., together with his wife and other Romanians in search of healing, followed Master Jiang and went to Chi- na. After working there with him, later in 2007, another Chinese master, and D.’s teacher, Professor Wang suggested that they attend a workshop held by another Chinese qigong master, the Longmen Daoist Wang Li- ping. Professor Wang himself was not a qigong master, but a scientist and member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, specializing in social psychology. Among others, he published a research on Master Wang Liping and his internal alchemy system. Joining Master Wang as his disciples, the Romanians have since then returned to China every three months, working both with him and with Master Jiang, following the “rule of the hundred days.” As P. explains:

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In any collaboration with a master or spiritual guide, one must see him in person every hundred days. Actually, this is a way of checking up on your progress, to see whether or not you have attained a certain level. If not, the master adjusts your practice and tells you what to do next in order to be able to move on to the next stage. If you have attained that already, of course, you can move on and get further instructions.

Their first major meditation retreat with Master Wang occurred in September 2008. P. came with his wife and six other Romanians, all former yogis. At that time, P. had not read yet Wang’s Daoist biography Opening the Dragon Gate: The Making of a Modern Taoist Wizard, translated by Thomas Cleary (New York, 1998) and was not aware of his status in the Daoist world. All that he knew was that they were attending a Chi- nese master’s meditation retreat, in the northern city of Dalian. For two people, the eight-day retreat, plus air fare tickets, accommodation, and translator, cost about 10,000 Euros. As P. stresses, ’’These things cost both time and money, but we work hard since we are really invested in them.” Wang in turn praised P. and his fellow seekers for their level of pre- paredness, finding it a very pleasant surprise that the former yogis had already trained in certain corporeal practices for well over a decade and conscientiously prepared by following homework instructions over several months before meeting Wang in person. For this reason, they were able to access certain higher levels of internal alchemy rather quickly and soon experienced spontaneous qi and body movements originating from the lower abdomen. P. explains

These movements do not happen unless your meridians are balanced and clean, and unless you have enough qi in the elixir field. When they happen, they are in fact not movements from muscles or bones, but from that charged energy battery.

P. describes the lower elixir field neither as a point, surface, or physical organ, but as a functional area, the seat of a function that the practitioner is expected to activate at a certain level. P. also says that it has its own breathing, memory, and life. While practice with Master Jiang happened once every three months or one hundred days, the internal alchemy training with Master

Toader, “A Romanian Spiritual Seeker” / 201

Wang required only an intensive once a year, in China or elsewhere, including also various European locations. For the latter, P. soon came to serve as co-organizer, representing the Romanian Association of Daoist Studies (RADS). One time, in 2011, the 10-day workshop was held in a mountain resort in northern Romania. Its thirty-five participants, under- took ‘’a program of intensive practice, between six to eight hours daily, exactly as in China.” P. considers Wang Liping his professor rather than his master or spiritual guide, a role reserved for Master Jiang, whose school P. joined as a formal disciple with all the responsibilities involved in early 2007. P. adds that one could not act as conscientious disciple in two schools or lineages, but should be faithful to the one we choose.

The Present Having trained extensively and over a long period, P. today also acts as a spiritual guide and instructor of qigong and internal alchemy. With Wang Liping’s approval, he frequently organizes both national and international workshops in Romania; P. also organized qigong practice and Chinese medical therapy groups to Xinglin Clinic in Huangshan, Anhui province until Master Jiang’s decease in 20161. He has healed himself completely. As he noted already in 2013,

Right now I am okay with my body. I do not suffer from any type of illness, haven’t been ill for many years. I like it. My constitution and body functions are okay.

P. stresses that he has never been hospitalized and has not had a sick day in over twenty years. ’’My state of health, my wellness, are due to those practices,” he concludes. This matches the stated goals of internal alchemy: physical and mental health, spiritual growth, and a good death. As P. says,

All I know is, normal human beings only have one chance to make the transition correctly. A single chance. So, you cannot die twice. Cases in

1 P.’s healing groups still continue under Jiang Feng’s successor, Wu Hongsheng, but the process takes place in a different location.

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which one dies twice are rare, such as when people undergo a near-death experience. But most people, even practitioners, have only one chance to make the transition correctly, to die a good death that leads from having a physical body to being a spiritual entity with no longer a physical body.

This, in turn, requires “a certain training for correct dying,” not unlike the classes pregnant women take before giving birth. Regarding the practitioner’s duties toward society, P. states that one should not burden the medical and social care system, but take care of one’s own health. In addition, this self-care is also a duty toward ances- tors and masters, as well as to one’s descendants. P. now calls himself an Orthodox Christian. After all, he was bap- tized as a child, got married in the church, and had his two children bap- tized as well. Still, he says that he is not interested in the social or ritual aspects of either Christianity or Daoism.

I believe that we are not born at random in a certain zone of the globe. Our birthplace has importance and meaning, as do the family and the belief of that family. None of them are random, and one should not change them.

This fundamental commitment does not preclude a critical attitude toward certain aspects of the Orthodox church, and P. stresses that it is not a good thing that social leaders tend to build more churches than schools and hospitals. In addition, he interprets certain Romanian popular beliefs and practices in terms of Daoist alchemy. Thus, he applies concepts of qi and blood, flow and blockage, yin and yang, as well as the five phases to make sense of various phenomena, such as possession, energy vampir- ism, the evil eye, bad heart, bad blood, lunacy, as well as the custom of placing a lit candle near the crown of the head of a deceased person shortly after his death.

Concluding Remarks I gave a final qualitative questionnaire to P. and his wife C. in September 2017, asking about four areas: practice goals; the elixir field in internal versus external alchemy; the relationship between master and disciple; and projections for the future.

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As regards their goals in practice, C. notes that “each practitioner has a particular goal in his or her practice,” emphasizing that these goals are unique to the person and “different from one person to another.” Also, as people advance in their practice, “their initial personal goal becomes more refined.” P. adds that most people have very practical goals, such as health, welfare, and longevity, things related to what Daoist called “destiny” (ming). But more important than these is finding personal answers to key questions of personal identity that relate to the Daoist concept of inner nature (xing): “Who am I? Where do I come from? Where am I going?” As for representations of the elixir field in the body, P. says that in internal alchemy the body is used as a source of “ingredients,” while the respiration functions as the “fire” that cooks them. In addition, he said in 2015, the Yijin jing describes the elixir field as a “function,” rather than a particular field or space or medicine. Yet “elixir” also means qi-enhanced pills and herbs as well as the “irrigation of certain acupuncture points with qi” by the Master, reflecting its use in external alchemy. C. never practiced the Yijin jing and describes the elixir point in internal alchemy as

a space you first imagine, then use to place various ingredients during your practice. In the end, it becomes a superb vessel, with three legs and ventila- tion holes in its cover. In its lower part, it is a little bit larger; its upper part is a bit narrower. Both its body and lid are made from hard material and black in color.

The relationship between master and disciple is, as P. points out, formalized in the Yijin jing. According to this, the disciple first of all owes the master respect, closely followed by consistent support, expressed in periodic visits, daily practice, group organization, help for newcomers, proselytizing, and financial support (money for herbs or pills in case of disease, while qigong initiation and techniques are free). The master in return offers a direct and personal relationship together with his know-how, clear guidance, and tests of progress in the ability to control and apply qi, as well as every effort to teach the disciple his own level of expertise.

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In internal alchemy today, this picture changes. Nowadays, students pay for attending seminars, while the teacher provides technical instruction and guidance. Overall the relationship is rather neutral and non-binding. In some cases, though, the teacher allows certain students to organize paid courses and public seminars, becoming spokespeople for his teaching. The teacher DOES NOT offer any personal diagnosis and healing. According to C., who does not practice the Yijin jing, but has at- tended healing groups on Huangshan, both the text and modern masters encourage disciples to offer respect, availability, and seriousness as well as gifts, typically traditional products from their home province or coun- try. The master in return provides qi-enhanced herbs, cultivation methods, alchemical pills, and periodic checks. This holds indeed true, as I can personally testify. Both masters, Wang Liping and Jiang Feng, generally display an attitude of affection and patience beyond common either teacher-student or any business relationships. In answer to the question where they see themselves in five years and as they grow older, P. asserts that he expects to be “less impacted by age and healthier than normal people of my age. I plan to write more books and produce all sorts of audio-visual materials for online teaching. I want to teach, guide, and help people eager to learn while being finan- cially independent through investments.” C., who has been deeply involved in raising their two sons, want to recover her earlier prowess.

I wish very much to resume my practice and recover the level I once reached with Master Wang, but this time by myself. He once explained during a seminar that our practice is good as and when we succeed in having the same results by ourselves that we had when he was with us. I am missing this level of fulfillment right now. Socially, I do not wish to stand out in any way. I consider one wastes much energy in this plane and if you do not have any message to com- municate to the people, you’d better mind your own business. Professionally, I am looking for my own calling right now. It is a diffi- cult, looking-for period, with numerous questions and with no answers. In five years, I see myself doing something that fulfills me fully. In practice, I want a certain continuity and progress for myself.

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As I grow older, I would like to retreat to the mountains, living in a small house in a natural setting. I hope to find a deep inner serenity and harmony within myself, continuing my practice and understanding the mysteries of life, preparing for dying correctly at the same time.

P. and his wife have two sons (4 and 7, respectively) and see raising them as a major priority in their lives, before even qigong and alchemical practice. Once the children are grown, spiritual practice will again be their major concern, focusing especially also on the transmission of the various techniques learned from Jiang Feng and Wang Liping. As P. says

I was granted permission to transmit not only Wang’s, but also Jiang’s teachings. And this is a thing that gives me great pleasure. I feel fulfilled when I do that. And I will keep doing it.

By 2014, P. had already transmitted these methods for about nine years, reaching over 300 people, probably more today. He adds that among them were alcoholics, drug-addicts, and many sick people who managed to transform themselves with his methods, making themselves more whole and the world a better and more harmonious place. In addition, I asked about their take on other schools, instructors, and spiritual seekers in Romania or elsewhere in terms of competition, monopoly, impostors, and more. Neither were willing to talk about this, but they both stressed the advantages and obstacles they encountered when working with various spiritual groups during their development. In all cases, as C. notes, one’s path is one’s own, truly personal and indi- vidual despite the underlying single truth all may find in the end.