Part 11: Diagrams and Drawings, Cont.

We now come to the less cryptic but more intriguing stone tablet from Baiyunguan (White Cloud Monastery) in Beijing. It is less cryptic because it follows the familiar Oxherder/Spinning Maiden Myth and the better known Kundalini Yoga schematics.

Rubbing of a stone tablet in the Monastery of the White Clouds, near Peking. Click HERE for a larger image.

We note the following cast of characters:

• Ox
• Plowman
• Spinning maiden/Vega
• Oxherder/Altair (in the heart region)
• Aquarius Boy (in the left "water wheel" kidney or testicle)
• Aquarius Girl (in the right "water wheel" kidney or testicle)
• Bodhidharma, as teaching monk, with upraised arms (in the mouth area)
• Lao Tzu as Patriarch (in the forehead)
• Blue Pearl/Immortal Foetus (suspended in space above the head)

The devotee in his Ego identity (let’s call him Fritz) is the Plowman who labors in the field. Under the guidance of Bodhidharma, he works, preparing the way. The methods of plowing are specifically "Wall Gazing" and Hara meditation; disciplined study; emotional detachment and independence; "burning off the dross" of desire by the generation of heat; ethical conduct; selflessness and kindness engendered by the understanding of spiritual principles; the reversal of the energy flow (visualized as seminal fluid) up the spine; various pranayama breathing techniques including "embryonic" breathing; the secretion of saliva; the generation of "elixir" by certain eye rotations; the washing or cleaning of the nadis or "meridian" channels and the movement of light energy through these channels; and so on.

Drawing of the Rubbing Stone

The 4-yin/yang cauldron in the lower right of the figure represents the necessary immolation of opposing "discriminations" or judgments.

Returning to Fritz’s journey: His anima is the Spinning Maiden (let’s call her Fritzie). When Fritz attains Divine Marriage, i.e., the Union of Opposites, he realizes her identity. This is a visionary experience so rapturous that it is pointless to try to describe it. It is non-stop, mind melting ecstasy - two weeks’ worth before consciousness is sufficiently restored and the next phase is entered.

Fritzie, the Spinning Maiden, has a lover, the Oxherder in the Heart. (The Plowman Fritz now sits in the audience observing the thrilling romance while he simultaneously experiences it from within his Anima/Soul/Fritzie’s body.)

On the 7th day of the 7th Month (a symbolic date) the Plowman, himself, is briefly united with his own Anima (in a stunning vision) and he impregnates her, producing the Pearl (the Lapis, Diamond Body, or Immortal Foetus) which, after a sufficient gestation period, will mystically pass through the spiritually-open fontanelles and appear above the head.

To nourish the gestating foetus, Fritz performs the microcosmic orbit’s retention of seminal fluid usually by restraining ejaculation through applying pressure at a point between the scrotum and anus. There are various methods for accomplishing this. (The resultant sensation, however pleasurable, in actuality nourishes nothing, spiritual or otherwise. The retained seminal fluid merely backs up into the bladder and is urinated at the next available opportunity.)

A bridge, formed by the tongue being pressed against the roof of the mouth to induce salivation, is called the magpie’s bridge. There are, in fact, three magpie bridges: the nasal duct (shang ch’ueh ch’iao); the tongue (chung ch’ueh ch’iao); and the anus (hsia ch’ueh ch’iao). Given that the magpies form a bridge on which the lovers are united, we see how complicated the Opus can become.

The liquid which the bridge spans is saliva and/or imaginary concoctions of purified fluids conveyed through the Orbit’s channels. Holding to the macro/micro model, the pearl-colored seminal and spinal fluids are the Milky Way’s own River Han. The flames which the figure gives off indicate the considerable heat the devotee feels during this rigorous meditation.

Finally, the Plowman Fritz has the work again of doing the "Egress" meditations - the bilocation meditations that are as fascinating as they are frustrating. The Pearl will transform into and be projected as a Bodhisattva, an heroic guide and spiritual healer. He will be based in the Heart.

The Pearl, the Oxherder, and the Patriarch Lao Tzu thus represent the triple god (Child Mercurius, Hermes, Hermes Trismegistus or any other variation of the "maturing" divine person). Lao Tzu is often associated with the Divine Bull on which he rides so harmoniously.

Lao Tzu riding an Ox (Bull)

Clearly, the Baiyunguan illustration is designed for the instruction of men. Not only is there a prominent penis but the Chinese believe that one testicle (or kidney) produces female offspring and the other produces male. This accounts for the boy and girl water-wheel operators. (I have no idea what they thought the two ovaries were for.)

Aside from numerous flames, there are two interior, mystical light sources: the dazzling ‘third eye’ Yang light (Ajna) which, when first experienced is a brilliant white light that is all but blinding, and in the rear of the cranium, the soft white Yin "moon" of enlightenment. As the Opus continues, the frontal Yang light becomes more and more infused with crimson blood/fire and more identified with Sun/Day; and the occiput’s Yin light becomes more intense with the infusion of semen and more identified with Moon/Night.

These "Sun and Moon eyes" copulate mystically to form an elixir which helps to form and nourish the Immortal Foetus. The elixir enters the system by way of the swallowed saliva pool.

Curiously, both Basques and Daoists envisioned the sun and moon as eyes... one of the day and one of the night. Contrary to Indo-European insistence that the left or sinister side is the female side, in most Daoist diagrams the moon is the right eye and the sun is the left.

The Moon is the monarch of the night sky, the Lord of the Night and the Bull of Darkness. In the Orient, Shiva is regarded as a rather manly Moon god. As Nandi, the Divine Bull, his horns are the very crescents of the moon. As previously noted, the Basques in antiquity worshipped a feminine Sun god and a masculine Moon god.

In the Corrida, the matador represents the sun or daylight’s interests and the bull represents the moon or darkness’ interests. Hence, ritualized Corridas occur at vital points of solstice and equinox, at which time a shift in "interest" occurs.

In the stone rubbing, pranayama exercises are illustrated by the windpipe pagoda, just as the saliva associated with parasympathetic "feeding or sexual arousal" is shown as a pool of water in which the elixir also collects.

The correspondences to Kundalini yoga are obvious. Plowing the earth is the Muladhara chakra; the waterwheel operations are Svadhisthana; the cauldron is Manipura, etc.

The Opus ends in the Heart. The Opus always ends in the Heart. We ride around the chakras or planetary orbits or whatever model we follow and produce the Pearl or Lotus Born One. Then we return to the Heart to end the Journey with a united Shiva/Shakti and to attend to the business of projecting the Pearl into the world. This union of Shiva/Shakti can be seen in the Anahatta illustration. The lines are specifically to be gold filaments - not the usual black lines - and the interior downward directed arrow (indicating this directional return to the Heart) contains the Shiva linga topped with a crescent moon. Thus the encircled Shiva is directly linked with gold to his shakti (the bindu).

Anahatta Chakra showing gold filaments connection Shiva and Shakti. From the version presented by Sir John Woodroffe in The Serpent Power.

Also, in the Daoist representation, stars (of an unknown constellation) and gold coins (gold signifying the end of the Opus, i.e., that lead has been transmuted into gold) are tossed out into the firmament or down into the field by the Oxherder.

The trees are "wishing trees" of absolute fulfillment. The Wishing Trees lotus under the Heart/Anahatta Chakra finds its counterpart in the clearly visible trees beneath the heart in the rubbing.

Again, we experience androgyny during our first entry into the Heart (Anahatta) Chakra on our way to the upper centers, then we descend to luxuriate in the Garden of Wishing Trees just beneath the Heart Chakra.

Detail of Lotus under the Heart Chakra.

Any attempts to explain the chakra system without taking Heart-chakra androgyny into account are naive, ‘guesswork’ fabrications. The superimposed upward pointing triangle (symbolizing the male organ - in Daoist terms "the mountain") and the downward pointing triangle (the pubic female area - in Daoist terms "the valley") form the six-pointed star.

Two other areas of interest should be mentioned: the first is that it is in this final descent into the Heart that we experience "the sound of one hand clapping"... the soundless sound of Anahatta - impossible to describe. This, no doubt, was the sound that St. John of the Cross had in mind when he spoke of "Silent music". The second is the siddhis Now we’ve pretty much ended our ten-years’ traversing of the incomparably blissful Sambhogakaya and are into the Dharmakaya’s zone of heavy physics. We leave the explanations for these strange and mysterious excursions into the Void to people who understand it better than we do.

Plowing with the Ox is the work of harmonizing our life, of uniting Light with Dark, Yin with Yang, Shakti with Shiva: Power and the Law power obeys. Seize the Ox’s nose and don’t let go! This is a metaphor for not letting opportunity slip by. (Carpe Diem!) The Oxherder drawings which depict flogging the divine are quite mistaken.

Nandi... Shiva as the Divine Bull. Who will whip him or put a ring in his nose?

  page 27 of 30