China’s Crown Chakra: Mt. Changbai

The highest volcanic waterfall in the world flows down into the valley where I believe One Cloud lived and meditated.

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Dear Lovers of Deep Volcanic Earth Mysteries,

I first learned of Mt. Changbai from Mantak Chia decades ago. It’s in Chinese Siberia, not easy to get to!  Wow! What a trip! Love to share my recent exploration of Mt. Changbai, “Perpetually White Mountain”. My story and photos will interest anyone interested in the lineage roots of the Healing Tao and the origins of its famous inner alchemy methods.

Mt. Changbai is an active volcano with a well named “Heavenly Lake” atop it in northeast China. Every volcanic core acts as a kind of deep earth portal. But Mt. Changbai contains “water falling from Heaven” (collected in a lake) and “fire rising from Earth”, hot magma below the lake, held in exquisite alchemical balance.

Spiritual Science of Water & Fire

Normally, water sinks and fire rises, and they separate. According to Taoist Internal Medicine, this separation of yin & yang is why we grow old. Our sexual energy leaks out below, and our brain, over-cooked by excess thinking and our heart stressed out by reactive emotions, release heat above. Eventually this separation causes organ exhaustion and death. We need balanced water and fire to rejuvenate our bodies and grow new cells.

In alchemy, when water and fire meet and couple in the reversed position of Mt. Changbai’s volcanic Heavenly Lake, the inner ground of our soul, called “True Earth”, is stabilized within the “ordinary earth” of our body’s field. This is the whole purpose of Water & Fire Inner Sexual Alchemy – to reverse and couple these forces in our body to preserve our integrity. From this True Earth soul ground the alchemically refined “True Gold” of an evolved Self can emerge if our virtue is high and we learn how to concentrate our consciousness.

Our monkey mind – the undisciplined ego – continually scatters our consciousness with frivolous desires. True Gold is the part of us that is so pure it will live beyond this physical life, after death. This generation of True Earth is happening continuously at Changbai volcano, making it an especially beneficial place for humans to meditate there.

One Cloud’s History & Healing Tao Lineage

The nine days I spent on Mt. Changbai was for me a journey to the very roots of the Healing Tao lineage. Mantak Chia’s teacher One Cloud, an ardent life-long spiritual seeker of the Way, left his family and business in the 1920’s (around age 45) and went searching for an inner alchemy teacher in the remote wilds of Mt. Changbai.

He found a Taoist hermit named White Cloud. White Cloud taught One Cloud the practical secrets of the original Tao Seven Formulas of Internal Alchemy that had been orally transmitted, adept-to-adept, for over a thousand years.

One Cloud left Mt. Changbai sometime after the Japanese invaded Manchuria, prior to WWll. He told Mantak how he hiked down from Mt. Changbai one day into the nearest town (likely Erdao Baihe, the last town on the only railroad to Changbai). He climbed into a tree to rest, but was forced to stay in the tree for 7 days when Japanese soldiers camped below.

One Cloud could survive this long without food, as he had attained the breatharian state. Later he walked all the way across China to Hong Kong (like walking from Maine to San Diego, only farther).

In the 1960’s Mantak Chia left Thailand and attended high school in Hong Kong. It was his fate to study with One Cloud in his hermit hut in the mountains a few miles behind Hong Kong’s famous Yuen Yuen Taoist temple. It was in this Hong Kong hut that One Cloud regaled young Mantak with tales about Changbaishan (shan = mountain).

No one knows what became of One Cloud’s teacher White Cloud, who stayed at Changbai – perhaps he ascended on an immortal crane into one of the 36 Taoist heavens?

Decades after first meeting Mantak, I discovered for myself that Changbai is an incredibly powerful portal for transformative Qi. Mantak had never visited Changbai, but after I told him how incredible it was he soon made a visit.

I believe this fire & water volcano is the hidden source of spiritual power behind the success of the Healing Tao’s transmission worldwide. There are many other alchemy groups in China who have NOT spread beyond their local sacred mountain (most of which I’ve visited on my many China Dream Trips).

My evolution of One Cloud’s formulas, after decades of teaching and refining them: http://www.healingtaousa.co/one_clouds_nine_tao_alchemy_formulas.html

    

Above: Mt. Changbai’s Heavenly Lake is an amazing water alchemy portal into Deep Earth. I meditated for hours on this chunk of lava, remnant of the world’s most powerful volcanic explosion in the last 10,000. years.

 Decades earlier on a Spring Equinox I had a mirror experience atop the Great Pyramid’s capstone, a fire alchemy portal into Heaven. Changbai is a water alchemy portal into deep Earth.

These were bookends for me to the planetary shift as Earth crossed the Dark Rift of the Milky Way galaxy’s center, marking the change from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius.

As I meditated deeply at Mt. Changbai, One Cloud’s claim that he and his teacher White Cloud attained the breatharian state became very believable. Note that documented cases exist, in multiple spiritual traditions, of people not eating for long periods and not losing weight. The volcano’s water-fire alchemy energy is so strong that it meditates you effortlessly.

I’ve never had such easy, deep and powerful kan & li (water & fire) alchemy meditations. Every cell in my body, my deepest jing (bone marrow, sexual essence and DNA-RNA) felt like it was being vibrated at a super high frequency in a cosmic pressure cooker. When you are being fed this kind of Qi energy from within, giving up solid food can be effortless — if you have a method for capturing the powerful Qi field in your body.

My visit gave me many amazing breakthroughs. I felt I had found the missing piece of a planetary jigsaw puzzle that began years earlier when I had a visitation from a Taoist immortal a few days before I had myself locked inside the Great Pyramid (story is in my book chapter in Internal Alchemy: Self, Society,& Quest for Immortality, edited by Livia Kohn,

Excerpted at: https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=94). Staying all night in the King’s Chamber, and for many nights atop the capstone, activated in me the pure fire element needed for whole-planet alchemy work.

But I found this fire initiation atop the Great Pyramid somehow incomplete. The Taoist alchemy work seemed necessary to balance out the planet’s East-West hemispheric brain. At Mt. Changbai,

I felt I had found simultaneously both the crown and root chakras of China, and that it somehow held a counter-balancing truth to the field held by the Great Pyramid. This relates to our planet’s two oldest traditions, matriarchal Lemuria and patriarchal Atlantis. This is a subject too deep for this letter, but to be discussed fully in an upcoming book.

I heard about White Cloud and Mt. Changbai from Mantak Chia when I was one of his first Western students in New York’s Chinatown. I have been to China 22 times since then (as of 2024). Why did it take me so long to get to this sacred Taoist mountain, at the root of my spiritual lineage? Why has Mantak Chia never visited it?

 Tourists & pilgrims climb the 1500 steps up the west slope of Mt. Changbai. You can drive close to the rim on the north slope.

It’s easy to NOT visit Mt. Changbai, as it’s so far out of the way. I travelled 17 hours by car and train from the nearest big city airport of Shenyang. It is north of North Korea, in Manchuria, essentially part of Siberia. It’s the equivalent of northern Maine in the USA, or Nova Scotia above it.

It is the largest pristine nature preserve in China (8,100 square miles). It’s where China’s most potent herbs like ginseng are grown, and Changbai Deer antler are harvested. Wild Siberian tigers and amur bears still roam freely.

Mt. Changbai volcanic rim has 16 peaks. But views of its lake are often covered in mists, especially during summer monsoon months. The internet is filled with stories of disappointed travelers who could not see the lake inside the crater. I was very blessed to have clear weather in late August.

This perpetual cloud cover makes the long journey to Changbai risky for tourists, except in winter when it’s very clear… but can get down to -45 F on the rim! The forested areas on the lower slopes of Changbai are warmer, with volcanic hotsprings. They were perfect for a Taoist recluse like White Cloud to get away from the noise of civilization.

I hedged my risk of bad weather on Changbai by staying for 9 days. I had another reason to visit the area. I was invited to speak at an International Qigong and Longevity conference in Tonghua, near Changbai. Even in Tonghua I noticed my qigong practice was picking up a Qi transmission from Changbai, more than one hundred miles away. (See the summary of my talk on “The Three Secrets of  Super-Longevity” below).

China’s “Most Dangerous Volcano” May Erupt Soon

Back to Changbai. What makes it so energetically powerful? It’s because of it’s intense volcanic activity. In 969 A.D. – about a thousand years ago – Changbai had what scientists call the “millennial eruption” – the most powerful blowout in the last 10,000 years, atomizing a three mile wide mountain top.

It was one hundred times more powerful than Mt. Helena’s eruption in 1980. It was three times the size of the eruption that created Crater Lake in Oregon 7800 years ago. Crater Lake is lovely to visit today, it energetically feels very serene, but it lacks the “on-the-edge” of actively combusting water & fire dynamic that makes Changbai much more powerful.

Changbai volcano has been erupting for several thousand years. But its biggest explosion was in the Song Dynasty. exactly when Taoist schools of neidan were flourishing and developing the internal alchemy formulas that White Cloud inherited from Tao masters like Lu Dongbin.

I suspect the energy of that huge explosion affected the collective psyche of China and accelerated its spiritual development. Is Changbai ready to soon give another boost?

Since 969 AD, Changbai has erupted again three times, including a minor flow as recently as 1903. It is considered China’s “most dangerous” volcano, and likely to erupt again within a decade or two. Researchers believe the magma chamber beneath Changbai has started to refill.

From 2002 to 2006, seismic activity increased to 72 earthquakes per month. It peaked in November 2003 with 243 quakes. Hot springs near the volcano show increased gas emissions, caused by degassing of freshly injected magma.

  L: Eggs boiled in hot spring for sale. This hot spring is a few hundred yards from where I believe One Cloud lived.

You can boil eggs in hot springs near Small Heavenly Lake, in a forrested valley about halfway down the side of the volcano. This is where I believe that One Cloud and White Cloud lived. There is Taoist outdoor shrine there, built 20 years ago for a love-story film made about Changbai.

Chinese athletes light a torch and perform ceremony atop Changbai to start the 2007 Asia Games.

Today the shrine is used actively by pilgrims, and features Sun Simiao, considered the father of Chinese medicine. This is the holiest mountain for both North and South Koreans – half the volcano is within North Korea, and Koreans especially line up to bow and pray at the outdoor shrine. Over 2 million ethnic Chinese-Koreans live nearby Mt. Changbai.

 

Emerald Lake is also near where I believe One Cloud lived, with many beautiful waterfalls.

Changbai is the holy mountain of the Manchus, who ruled China from 1644-1911 (Qing dynasty). It’s the mythical birthplace of Bukuri Yongson, whose ancestors were the founders of the Manchu state and the Qing Dynasty. The sacred mountain is prized as the original Manchu homeland. During the Qing, annual rites were held there to celebrate the origins of the ruling dynasty.

Changbai can be found in Chinese geographical texts dating back to the Shanhai jing, “Classic of Mountains and Seas,” of the 3rd century B.C., a major source of Chinese mythology.

One Cloud told Mantak Chia that “the higher he climbed up Changbai, the more warmth he found”. Hot springs would explain that remark, and Small Heavenly Lake or nearby Emerald Lake with its gorgeous waterfalls would have supplied needed water for hermits. The area has abundant herbs and edible greenery, and the deep valley is protected from harsh winds.

I found the spiritual energy of Changbai is easier to meditate with and capture at the level of Small Heavenly Lake (beside the volcano’s fire-water coupling) than on the rim (2000 feet above the lake).

The winters are cold and dry (due to Arctic winds) but there is only light snow. A strong Taoist internal practice can generate heat inside the body to repel cold. I interviewed the caretaker at Small Heavenly Lake, Wang Shih Fan, who has lived there 22 years and raised two children there. It’s definitely livable.

Tao Master Ju Xi: Changbaishan Pai is THE Original Taoist Path

My theory about where One Cloud and White Cloud lived was given credence by the only local Taoist I could find near the base of Changbai. Finding this totally secluded Taoist was an amazing story in itself. I had searched the internet in vain for any references to modern Taoists near Changbai.

All the locals said there was no Taoist temple or Taoists they knew of. At the county museum it mentioned a Taoist hermit had built a bagua-shaped “Tao miao” (temple) on the rim of the North Slope (at 9000 ft. elev.) in around 1905, shortly after the train came to Changbai. It was built from stone, but the Taoist hermit found life so difficult on top that he abandoned it after some years and it fell into decay. I could not even find its remnants.

The “Stone Forest” of lava formations fills the park at the base of Mt. Changbai, reminderof its massive eruption.

Given how powerful I felt the mountain was spiritually, I couldn’t believe that no modern Taoists were drawn to it. One day I went hiking in the forest at the base of the mountain, and I stumbled across a giant wooden “birds nest”, a tower that spiralled up to the treetops.

The sign said – in English! – it was built so that aspiring immortals could climb up and have a short cut to talk to the Jade Emperor in Heaven. So naturally I climbed up, and on top of the Bird’s Nest did a wuji gong (primordial tai chi) ceremony. I asked to be connected to any living Taoists on Changbaishan.

When I got back to my hotel, the manager immediately said to me, “by the way, I found someone who knows a local Taoist”. Wuji Gong really works fast! That somebody was the regional government’s director of Changbai Culture and History. We met within the hour. He said there was only one Taoist near Changbai, that he was famous elsewhere in China, but not locally, even though he was locally born.

The next day, after a two hour drive to a remote forest location, I was introduced to Ju Xi (pronounced “juicy”). Ju Xi is really amazing. He has degrees in engineering and philosphy, and has written 7 books about the most esoteric aspects of Taoism. He is currently building a Taoist University at the base of Changbaishan, where he will train adepts in the science of “inner time and space”.

I recorded a two hour interview with him, and plan to make a video, integrated with footage of Mt. Changbai. His research is of great importance for the global Healing Tao community. After he’s finished building in the next two years, I hope to bring some serious Western Taoists to do a retreat there.

L: Ju Xi, age 62 (in 2013), holder of the Changbaishan Path of Taoism. His students come from big cities elsewhere in China. One of them told me: “Ju Xi is the best Taoist teacher in the whole of China”. His students clearly love him, as they are funding the building of Changbaishan Tao university.

Here’s the jist of Ju Xi’s message:

Mt. Changbai’s connection to Taoism goes back 4000 years. “Changbaishan Pai” – the Tao Path of Mt. Changbai – precedes the other schools of Taoism that developed over the centuries. Changbai has been recognized as holy and written about in most dynasties.

The author of the oldest Taoist alchemical text from the 2nd century AD, Wei Boyang, was trained at Changbaishan. I was already familiar with his text, the Cantong Qi (Triplex Unity), and had concluded that it is the only ancient text with clear explication of the principles behind One Cloud’s inner alchemy formulas.

Ju Xi’s research went far beyond what I had found – that the last dynasty in China, the Qing emperors from Manchuria, regarded Changbaishan as the source of their power. They declared that Huashan in the West and Tai Shan in the East both had dragon veins that were fed from Changbaishan, the top and most holy mountain in China. They declared Changbai shan was the 6th Holy Mountain, above the other five.

How did Ju Xi comes to research all this? He was sentenced to hard labor during the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards, to recover his health, he came back home and to heal himself spent 3 years at the hot springs at the very base of Changbai. He read the Tao Canon (= Taoist “bible”, with 1160 scrolls) during those 3 years, and did long meditations.

He used information he found in it to open both his micro and macro cosmic orbits (8 Extraordinary Vessels). Later he travelled to all parts of China, to study the different Tao paths. He considers himself a Taoist philosopher and spiritual scientist, not a priest.

Likely Location of One Cloud’s Cave or Hut

I asked Ju Xi if he ever heard of One Cloud or White Cloud. He had not. But in the early 80’s he HAD heard of Taoist hermits still living at Small Heavenly Lake – where I had already concluded was the logical place for One Cloud to live. This was long before a road was put in for tourism. One Cloud would have left some forty years before Ju Xi’s healing time at Changbai’s lower elevation hot springs.

The Director of Cultural History confirmed that the foundations of wooden huts of hermits had been found at Small Heavenly Lake. Bill Porter’s classic book, Road to Heaven, is an account of his hunting down Taoist and Buddhist hermits in China. He mostly portrays them living in simple huts, not caves.

Huts can be sealed against cold wind, wild animals and bats, and can be situated near water or ideal feng shui sites. Even the caves on Huashan – carved out of solid granite by Taoist adepts – originally had wood doors on them, as my China Dream Trippers know well since they stay in them.

I couldn’t find any caves on Changbaishan, and spent a fair amount of time looking for one. I heard no mention of lava tubes (like you find in Hawaii). Most of the lava-covered areas of the upper mountain are not liveable.

The odds of One Cloud finding a second liveable cave near to his teacher White Cloud (assuming he found a cave) seem even more remote. Given that Ju Xi only heard of Tao hermits near Small Heavenly Lake, I vote for that as the most likely abode for both One Cloud and White Cloud, probably living in huts.

Over my decades of Taoist cultivation, I’ve noticed my skill at feeling different layers of past-present-future realities have grown to a much higher level. During deep meditations, I asked my Inner Sage to find and share with me any unique memories of One Cloud or White Cloud stored within Changbai’s Qi field. I quickly got that their memories have already been dissolved alchemically by the larger Water & Fire cauldron of the volcano.

 

Santorini Island I found very supportive of teaching Taoist Water & Fire alchemy. But the crater perimeter is broken, so it doesn’t hold the alchemical Qi as powerfully as Changbaishan.

I had noted a similar dissolving effect on the Greek island of Santorini, where I’ve taught of number of kan & li alchemy retreats. Santorini has villages perched on the rim of a still active volcano, but its now filled with ocean water. Greek students visiting from the mainland often commented that they felt disoriented and unable to remember themselves fully.

This is caused by the increase in neutral force, generated by fire-water alchemy from the sea-filled volcano. Changbai has the same effect, only it is far more powerful within its fully intact crater. So I’m not surprised that all psychic memory imprints of One Cloud at Changbai have been erased.

Tapping into Changbai’s Full Spiritual Potential

Ordinary tourists to Changbai only see (with outer eyes) the lovely serene 5 mile wide Heavenly Lake visible from the rim. I sat on the North and West rims and meditated for three hours at each. This was abnormal behavior for a tourist, and it freaked out the rim guards, who kept asking if I was sick. “No. I’m just crazy”, I finally told them…:) Then I added I was doing neigong. They looked very surprised, but then left me alone.

During meditations, my energy body was spontaneously drawn deep into the center of the lake. I could feel the potential of the 538 billion gallons of water in its cauldron – essentially a huge sexual charge — waiting to create “new earth” when hot lava again suddenly vaporizes the lake in a another super mega-ton nuclear explosion.  Could this happen sooner than expected, part of the earth changes predicted by many as we transit into the Aquarian Age?

In my attunement to Changbai’s Present Moment, I felt what a powerful Earth Portal this volcano is, a vast highway into the core of the earth. I’ve meditated atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii (at 14,000 feet),where I had a very fiery, multi-dimensional kundalini experience (read: Inside Pele’s Hot Volcanic Vulva: https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=110). In Hawaii you have the Pacific Ocean around you, but the volcanic portal is pure fire. So there is no real container for the water-fire interaction.

Every volcano is a portal. But Changbai’s unique fire & water energetic balance I found allows for much greater stability in penetrating into the very core of Mother Earth. Attuning to Changbai is like entering deep into Mother Earth’s mingmen, our planetary gate of destiny.

I’m not projecting myself into any catastrophic future triggered by Changbaishan’s second millenial eruption. I believe that the core channel of Planet Earth (connecting the north & south poles) is likely to experience a dramatic expansion before winter solstice of 2015. This will mark the end of the 36 year cycle since the earth’s axis began crossing the Milky Way’s Galactic “Dark Rift” in its center.

This Dark Rift caused all the hullaballoo over the Mayan predictions around winter solstice 2012 (for more details on galactic alignment, read two newsletters:

1) Mayan Solstice 2012: Does Galactic Alignment Matter?

https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=157

2) Earth Changes: How to Create a New Timeline.

https://healingtaousa.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?rm=mode2&articleid=158

     

L: A mayan-style temple not far from Changbaishan, which may have influenced Mayan architecture over a thousand years ago. R: Bridge over Yalu River looks onto North Korea. The river is fed by Changbaishan. Kim Il Jong, North Korea’s last leader, came to power by leading a guerrilla movement against Japanese occupiers that was led from Mt. Changbai. Half of Heavenly Lake is in North Korea territory.

Is a Global Shock wave Coming from Earth’s Core?

If my gut feeling – and recent I Ching readings – are correct, a surge of Original Breath from the Earth’s mingmen and core channel as it hits matter could send a shock wave through the planet and humanity as early as next year. This might cause many different responses, ranging from “etherically feeling a little lighter” to apocalyptic visions in those who want that. Just as human souls have multiple timelines they choose from in each moment, Earth is a Being with multiple timelines.

It’s like a software upgrade: Earth 3.5 or Earth 4.0? Which version of earth you end up on will depend on what you believe. This is why aligning your will, opening your heart. and having a regular cultivation practice is so important.  These help to determine how ready you are to manifest the vibrational frequency underlying a given new reality upgrade.

My personal approach is to stay grounded in my own core being and let any shock wave pass through and take me spontaneously to where I am most needed. I trust that  Pure Love from Tai Yi (Great Oneness or Central Sun that precedes all yin-yang polarity) will radiate through my soul crystal and body, and guide me to support the creation of humanity’s highest destiny.

I feel One Cloud’s transmission of Taoist inner alchemy was so powerful because it was and IS still backed by Changbai’s Deep Earth consciousness. We’re in a planetary historical big cycle of feminine energy rising from Earth, not masculine energy descending from Heaven. That’s why the old sky god religions are declining. At Changbaishan, the vibration of deep cooking of my jing, my sexual energy and bone marrow essence was amazingly profound, and omnipresent within my body. It has continued cooking within me, even after I returned to America. So I’m continuing to listen within the earth, using Changbai as my stethescope.

Meditating in the physical presence of Changbai’s Water & Fire Qi field generated an almost automatic alchemical transformation. My whole Energy Body became much more solid. My normally subtle pre-natal Qi condensed into more tangible form. I experienced PHYSICALLY a unified energy state, rather than my normal feeling of a dense physical body with lighter flows of Qi moving through organs, bones, flesh, and meridians.

I grasped how much easier it was for One Cloud to become a breatharian at Changbaishan than in some weaker Qi field, where most modern urban Taoists find themselves practicing. I continue to feel a deep unified jing Qi rising up within my body to unify all 3 dantian. My core channel continues to crystallize into one solid column of dynamic cosmic energy.

It is my hope that reading this account and seeing the photos, that Healing Tao adepts anywhere on the planet can attune to this process.