Reverse Cultivation and Energy Borrowing
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        There are some people who have never practised qigong or have learned just a few movements in a qigong training class. However, what they have learned is not cultivation, but belongs to something used to eliminate diseases and keep fit. That is to say, these people have never received true teachings. But they suddenly find themselves possessed of energy overnight. Now I am going to tell you how they have got gong (energy), and there are several ways of doing so.

        One of them refers to reverse cultivation. What is reverse cultivation? There are some people who are quite old but still want to cultivate. It is too late for them to cultivate from the very beginning. In the high tide of qigong, they also wanted to cultivate. They knew that by practising qigong they could do good for others, and at the same time they could improve themselves. They had such a wish to improve and cultivate themselves. But in the high tide of qigong in the previous years, what those qigong masters did was to popularize qigong, and there was nobody who really taught things of a high order. Even up till today nobody but I really teaches the Gong of a high order in public. All the reverse cultivators are above fifty. They are quite old but have very good inborn qualities, and what they carry in their bodies is very good. Such people are almost good enough to be selected as disciples or successors. However, since they are getting old, it is by no means easy for them to cultivate. Where can they find a master? But when they just think of cultivating themselves, such a heart will glitter like gold and shake the Ten Directions. People often mention the word Buddha-nature. And this is what they mean by Buddha-nature, which has come out.

        Seen from the high dimension, human life is not meant for being a human being. As human life is born in the cosmic space, it is in conformity with Zhen Shan Ren, the fundamental qualities of the universe, and originally has a kind and good nature. However, when there are more living beings, they fall into a social relationship, in which some of them have become selfish or bad and can no longer stay in the very high dimension, so they drop into a lower one. When they become bad again in this dimension, they have to drop down and down until they have dropped into this realm of ordinary people. They are to be annihilated when they have dropped into this realm. However, out of compassion those great enlightened beings have decided to give human beings another chance by putting them in the hardest of circumstances, so they have created such a space.

        People in the other spaces do not possess such bodies. They can float in the air. They can become bigger or smaller. However, in this space human beings are provided with bodies, such as our physical bodies. With such a body, you will find cold, heat, fatigue or hunger all unbearable. Anyway, these are all sufferings for you. When you are ill, you feel pain. You have to go through birth, old age, diseases and death. You are left in the sufferings to pay your karmic debts. You are given another chance to see whether you can return or not. Therefore, you have dropped into a maze in which you are provided with two eyes so that you are not able to see the other spaces, or the truth of matter. If you can return, the greatest suffering will be the most valuable. In such a maze, you have to suffer a lot when you cultivate yourself to return in dependence on your awakening ability, and thus, you will go back quickly. If you still let yourself go bad, your life will be annihilated. Therefore, in the eyes of the enlightened beings, human life is not to be lived as a human being. A person is expected to return to the origin and go back to the truth. An ordinary person cannot awake to this. An ordinary person in ordinary human society is no more than an ordinary person. What he thinks about is how to develop himself and how to live a good life. The better he lives, the more selfish and greedy he will become and the more he will run counter to the fundamental qualities of the universe. Thus, he will head for his doom.

        Seen from the high dimension, you are actually going backward when you think you are moving forward. Human beings think that they are developing science and are progressing, but they are simply following the Law of the universe. Zhang Guolao, one of the Eight Immortals, rode a donkey backwards. Few people know why he rode a donkey that way. He found that one was actually moving backward when he was going forward, so he rode a donkey with his back facing ahead. Therefore, when some people want to cultivate, the enlightened beings regard such hearts as extremely valuable and help them without condition. Just as our students sitting here today, if you want to cultivate, I can help you without condition. But as an ordinary person, if you want to have your disease cured, want to have this or have that, I will not help you. Why? Because you want to be an ordinary person, and an ordinary person must go through birth, old age, diseases and death. He has to live that way. Everything has its causational relationship which cannot be disrupted. There was originally no cultivation arranged for you in your life. Now that you want to cultivate, your future life will be rearranged and your physical body can be put right.

        Now a person wants to cultivate. When this intention was born, the enlightened beings saw it and highly appreciated it. But how to help this person? Where can he find a master in this world? Besides, he is already over fifty. The great enlightened beings themselves cannot teach him. If they revealed themselves to teach him, preaching the Law and imparting the practice exercise to him, they would reveal the secrets of heaven, and thus would fall down. Human beings have dropped into the maze as a result of their evil doings and they have to cultivate in the maze in dependence on their own awakening. Therefore, the enlightened beings cannot teach them. Seeing a real Buddha preaching the Law and teaching the practice exercise, even a person who is guilty of unpardonable evil will come to learn, and everyone will believe. Then, what is there for him to awake to? The question of awakening would not exist. It is human beings themselves who have dropped into the maze. So they should have been annihilated. Now in this maze you are given a chance to return. You return if you can. If you fail to return, you will continue to live in the rebirth cycle and finally meet annihilation.

        One walks with his own legs. What would he do if he wanted to cultivate? The enlightened found a way. At that time, there occurred a high qigong tide, which resulted from a change of the celestial phenomena. In order to work with the change in the celestial phenomena, the enlightened beings supplied him with energy on the merits of his Xinxing through a soft pipeline connected with his body, which worked like a water tap. The moment he turned it on, the energy came out. When he wanted to release the energy, the energy came to him. When he did not release it, he possessed no energy. He was in such a state. This is called reverse cultivation in which he cultivates to reach consummation by cultivating from the high to the low.

        We generally cultivate from the low to the high until we have opened our cultivation energy and reached consummation. A reverse cultivation, however, is meant for one who is quite old and cannot afford to cultivate from the low to the high, for it would be quicker for him to cultivate from the high to the low, which was also a phenomenon of the time. Such a person must have very high Xinxing. He is provided with corresponding energy on the merits of his Xinxing. What for? One of the purposes is to work with the then celestial phenomena. He may bear hardships when doing good, as all kinds of worldly desires will disturb him when he is confronted with ordinary people. Some people will show no understanding for him though he has cured them of their diseases. While giving them treatment he has removed a lot of bad things from their bodies and given them such a cure that may not necessarily cause a marked change in them then. So they will feel unhappy and show him no gratitude. Maybe they will even call him a trickster. With these problems his heart will be tempered in such circumstances. One is expected to cultivate and improve himself when he is supplied with energy. He can develop his powers and increase his cultivation energy while he is doing good. But there are some people who do not realize this. Didn't I tell you that the Law cannot be preached to them? It is a matter of awakening. If a person cannot awake to it for himself, there is no way out.

        When some people received the energy, they would suddenly feel themselves burning one night in their sleep and could hardly bear the cover of their quilts. They got up the next morning and would get an electric shock from whatever they touched. They knew that they had got the energy. Seeing someone suffering a pain in the body, their hands would move over the affected part casually, and found this quite good. From then on they knew that they were possessed of energy. So they acted like qigong masters and hung up their signboards. They proclaimed themselves qigong masters and established a practice. At the beginning, as good people, they would turn down the money or the gifts offered to them when they cured other people of their diseases. But in the big dye vat of ordinary people, they could not escape being contaminated, because such reverse cultivators had never gone through the real cultivation of their Xinxing and it was very hard for them to keep up a good Xinxing. Gradually they would begin to accept small keepsakes. Then they would accept big things. In the end they would feel offended when not enough was given to them. Then they would say: "Why give me so many things? Give me money!" And they would become very unhappy when they were not given enough money. What's more, they refused to admit their inferiority to qigong masters of Orthodox schools. Their ears were filled with others' compliments about their abilities. They would be unhappy when someone said something bad about them. Their desire for fame and gain was up. They thought they were smarter than others and were really extraordinary. They thought that they were given the energy so that they could act as qigong masters and make a great fortune without realizing the fact that the energy was meant for their cultivation. When their desire for fame and gain was up, their Xinxing had actually fallen down.

        I have said, the height of one's Xinxing determines that of one's cultivation energy. When one's Xinxing has been lowered, he can no longer be supplied with so much energy. The energy is to be given with the change of one's Xinxing, as the height of one's Xinxing determines that of one's cultivation energy. The stronger one's desire for fame and gain, the more heavily he will fall among ordinary people, and his cultivation energy will also become diminished. In the end when he has fallen down to the bottom, the energy will not be given to him and he will possess no energy at all. Quite a lot of such people were found years ago, and most of them were women over fifty. You see the old woman practitioner had never received true teachings except that she may have learned some movements in a qigong training class to get rid of her diseases and keep fit. One day, all of a sudden she gained the energy. However, when her Xinxing turned bad and her desire for fame and gain was up, she fell down. Now she is nobody and she has no energy found in her. A great number of reverse cultivators have fallen down and very few remain now. Why? Because she did not know that this was for her to cultivate herself. She thought this was for her to make a fortune, to win fame and to act as a qigong master among ordinary people. But in fact this was for her to cultivate herself.

        What is energy borrowing? This has no age limit. But there is one requirement that this should happen to a person who has extremely good Xinxing. He knows that one can cultivate himself through practice of qigong and he also wants to cultivate. He has the intention of cultivating himself, but where can he find a master? It is true that some years ago there were indeed some true qigong masters who were teaching some cultivation systems. However, what they taught was only something to eliminate one's diseases and keep fit. But nobody taught qigong of a high order. Nobody would teach that.

        Speaking of energy borrowing, I have one more thing to talk about. Besides Zhu Yuanshen ( the chief spirit), a person also has Fu Yuanshen ( assistant spirit). Some people have one, two, three, four, or five Assistant Spirits. The Assistant Spirit and the person are not necessarily of the same sex. It may be a male or a female, different from individual to individual. As a matter of fact, the Chief Spirit and its physical body are also not necessarily of the same sex, as we have found that now there are a great number of men who have female Spirits and a great number of women who have male Spirits, which is just in conformity with the cosmic climate of Yin and Yang being reversed with Yin in prosperity and Yang in decline as held by the Tao School.

        One's Assistant Spirit often ranks higher than the Chief Spirit. Especially some people's Assistant Spirits come from a very high dimension. An Assistant Spirit is not at all spirit possession. Born together with you from your mother's womb, it shares the name and the body with you. Usually it is the Chief Spirit that has the final say in deciding what one should think about or what one will do. The main task of an Assistant Spirit is to prevent one's Chief Spirit from doing evil. But when the Chief Spirit is headstrong, the Assistant Spirit can do nothing to help. The Assistant Spirit will not be misled by the society of ordinary people, but the Chief Spirit is likely to.

        Some Assistant Spirits come from very high dimensions. Maybe they are on the verge of completing the right achievement. The Assistant Spirit wants to cultivate, but it cannot help it when the Chief Spirit does not want to. One day, in the high tide of qigong, the Chief Spirit also wanted to learn an exercise system to reach a higher level of cultivation. Of course, this idea was quite simple, without any desires for such things as fame and gain. The Assistant Spirit was delighted by this: "I want to cultivate, but I don't have the say. You want to cultivate, it is just what I want." But where could it find a master? The Assistant Spirit was quite capable, and it left the body to see the great enlightened being it had come to know in its previous life. Some Assistant Spirits rank very high and they are able to leave the body. When it came to the enlightened being and expressed its wish to cultivate and borrow some energy, the latter was glad to help it with its cultivation when seeing the man was quite good. Thus, the Assistant Spirit got the energy, which was usually composed of some scattering energy and was transported through a pipeline. Some may get something in a finished form, which is usually possessed of supernormal capabilities.

        In this way the energy in finished form is possessed of supernormal capabilities as well. Just as I mentioned above, this person felt himself burning in his sleep at night. When he woke up the next morning, he found himself possessed of energy. He would get an electric shock whatever he touched and was able to cure diseases. He knew that he was possessed of energy. Where was it coming from? He was not clear. He had only a general idea that it was coming from a cosmic space, but he was not able to know exactly how it had come. He did not know about all this, but the Assistant Spirit told him nothing, as it was the Assistant Spirit itself who cultivated. Therefore, he knew nothing but the coming of the energy.

        There is no age limit for the people to borrow energy. However, most of them are young people. Therefore, in previous years there were such people at the age of over twenty or over thirty or over forty coming out to the public. There were also old ones. A young man will find it more difficult to control himself. You may find that he is quite good in normal times. In the society of ordinary people he shows little interest in fame and gain when he is not capable. However, once he has risen above others, he is likely to be obsessed with fame and gain. He thinks that there is still a long way for him to go in his life and he still wants to make a rush and have a struggle so as to reach some goal of ordinary people. Therefore, once he possesses the supernormal capabilities and becomes capable, he is prone to use them as the means to win his personal objectives in the society of ordinary people. It won't do. One is not allowed to use his capabilities in this way. The more he uses them, the less energy he will possess. In the end he will possess nothing. Many such people fell down. I don't think there is even one of them left now.

        The two cases I talked about just now are about the energy gained by those with good Xinxing. The energy of this kind is not developed through one's own cultivation, but is borrowed from an enlightened being. So, the energy itself is good.