NEW Initial orientation regarding the last two formulas following UHT Sealing of the 5 Senses

Formula 8:  Ecstatic Spirit Flight – Entering the Congress of Heaven and Earth

Flight is not escape! It is the resonance of one who merges the three realms—spirit, heaven, and earth—while weaving together the dimensions of meditation, dreams, and embodied life.

At Formula 8, the practitioner transcends the sealing of the five senses and enters the Congress of Heaven and Earth through the awakening and unification of the Nine Cauldrons. Spirit flight begins—not as a metaphor, but as a lived energetic transformation. The body-mind dissolves and rides the flame of Li, while Kan becomes the sky-road of heaven. The adept becomes a citizen of the cosmic order, preparing to merge Heaven and Earth within their own being.

Each Cauldron reveals a layer of spiritual cosmology and energetic refinement. Through the abdominal, heart, and cranial cauldrons, the physical form is transmuted, and the spirits and souls are unified in the blessing of the Great White Light. The seven senses are trained—not only to perceive the spiritual realm—but ultimately to dissolve into it.

The Energy Body Cauldron initiates movement beyond the physical: an astral chariot, a subtle transport field.
The Earth Cauldron unifies all cultures, beings, elements, and spiritual traditions into a single planetary soul—Gaia, or Hou Tu (后土), the Taoist Empress of the Earth.
At the Solar System Cauldron, centred on Saturn, consciousness expands to solar scale. Sage-like wisdom dawns; the adept assumes a godlike vantage of discernment and compassionate authority.
The Cauldron of the South Celestial Pole, aligned with the Southern Cross, cultivates True Yin—the cosmic abbess veiled in mystery, receptive as divine eros, open herself to the highest celestial love.
At Polaris, the North Star Cauldron receives the luminous seed of True Yang—the Great White Light and divine fire descending from the Three Pure Ones. It integrates the entire starry vault, each constellation a legend, a teaching, a spark of divine medicine.

As all these cauldrons merge into a single alchemical unity, the Final Cauldron is born—not located in space, though often felt at the third eye or within the Crystal Palace. From the clouds of Li arises the spirit vehicle—phoenix, dragon, crane, or flying carpet—conveying the adept through the ecstatic dimensions of eternal flight. These eternal realms are not fixed heavens but the transfiguration of Kan, the watery clouds, now imbued with all of self.

In this state, consciousness dissolves into the Mysterious Pass, where time, self, and object vanish. The House of Kan becomes the sky-soil of heavenly memory and the divine unfolding of identity. Spirit flight is not mere elevation—it is immersion into cosmic union, the sacred moment when Heaven enters Earth and Earth enters Heaven. This is an erotic, loving land knowing congress, the ecstatic prelude to dissolution.
It is the timeless repose that fulfills the soul with such ecstasy, that at the destined place, the spirit willingly offers itself to the Great Unknown—Formula 9: The Reunion of Human and Tao.

Formula 9:  The Grand Completion – The Reunion of Human and Tao

Formula 9 marks the consummation of the Taoist journey—the blossoming of the path into pure silence. The adept, having mastered the Nine Cauldrons and been satiated by journeys through ecstatic flight, now surrenders wholly into the ineffable: into Wu Ji, the Supreme Nothingness. The fire of spirit, once used for ascent, now cools into stillness. Rather than flying outwards, the adept begins to dissolve inward, where light and darkness embrace in the primordial womb of all origins. This is not death, but the Grand Completion—the return to the Source.

At this stage, coupling occurs within the final cauldron. The love between True Yin and True Yang matures into an intimacy so refined that the fire of yang extracts and refines all remaining yin, until even the most subtle yang becomes indistinguishable from yin. Their union approaches and eventually marries the unnamable. This is the gate to Wu Ji, the Supreme Nothingness.

In this supreme embrace, the adept may experience the paradox of total expansion and total concentration. A single dot of light may reveal itself to be another universe—complete with its own Nine Cauldrons and ecstatic paths. Each speck, each star, becomes a gateway to new universes. In focusing on the smallest point, the vastest realm is entered. Infinity folds into nothing; nothing blooms into infinity. The adept dissolves not through force, but through absolute loving surrender— a sense of sacrifice into sweet obliteration.

Some may ascend via ecstatic flight vertically into the realm of light, losing all markers of time and space until only the subtle inaudible hum of being remains. Others may spiral into the abyss, welcomed by the deep silence of unitary darkness. Both routes return to the one. The adept becomes the most primordial component of the entire universe—the subtlest essence from which form and spirit arise. The immortal spirit becomes emptiness.

This final union is not a solitary enlightenment, but a cosmic marriage—a reunion of Heaven and Humanity - of the Tao with all its seekers. The adept becomes transparent to all forms and attuned to all beings, yet anchored nowhere. This is the land of no shadows and no echoes, where the Tao of consciousness flows into boundless clarity. This is home—not a place, but a state of sublime union both before the beginning and after the ending. The Grand Completion is the blossoming of the Tao, the forgetting of the self, and the resting in eternal becoming.

And from this deathless death, there arises a beginning once more. Yet the knowing born of the Grand Completion is irreversible—life and perspective are forever transformed.

Grandmaster Mantak Chia and Dr Andrew Jan February 2025 Tao Garden