Mantak Chia
Sex is Natural - Not Sinful
Living Green from the Inside Out – Recycle your Sexual Energy
Mantak Chia - A Modern Taoist Masterby Christopher Larthe
He was born in Bangkok to Chinese parents in 1944. His father was a Baptist minister, the first break in many generations of Taoist Healers. In a land of Buddhism, with strong Hindu and animist influences, Mantak Chia was brought up as a Christian. After twenty years in the West, he now lives and works at the Tao Garden, the home and healing meditation centre he has created in Northern Thailand.
In this interview for Positive Health magazine, Mantak Chia talks to Christopher Larthe about healing and magic, sex and religion, recycling sexual energy, and immortality.
CL: You taught first in your home city of Bangkok and then in the Chinese community of New York. Your main work was healing, but it was the sexual practices that caught the attention of your Western students. These secret arts were originally taught to enable an Emperor to enjoy his harem of wives and concubines without depleting his energies. You were brought up a Christian. Did you not feel a conflict with the Christian ideas of sin?
MC: No conflict, for sexual practices are healing practices, healing the self, healing relationships. It is only sin if you see it as sin.
Sex is natural, not sinful.
The human being has a powerful sex drive – and you cannot keep ping-pong balls under water. Sometime, somewhere, they pop back up, maybe as disease, maybe as emotional problems, causing energy blockages, leading to illness.
CL: Are you saying we should repress nothing, have sex whenever and wherever, with whoever?
MC: I say sex is your servant, not your master. Who am I to decide where and when, or who you do it with? This is between you and your conscience. I teach how to control and harness the sexual energy, energy powerful enough for a man to repopulate a continent with a single ejaculation. And every woman is born with enough eggs to generate hundreds of lives. Without reproduction all that power is wasted.
If we are not using the hormones and nutrients of sexual activity to start a new life we can recycle it to make our own life longer, healthier, more enjoyable.
Not repressing, recycling!
CL: And the moral aspect?
MC: All the churches make the morals, but they all say different things. Some religions say sex with corpses is a sacred path to enlightenment, with others you may have several wives at once, while in others you go to hell for impure thought.
What is impure thought? Every man secretly imagines being Emperor, having many women, even monks and priests, even saints – Saint Augustine said "Lord give me chastity, but please, not just yet."
Some churches try to make us feel guilty for thinking natural thoughts. Yet these urges make our human species so successful, so strong, survive so many generations. Imagine an enlightened being descending to earth now and telling us it is sinful to move our bowels. We'd all go pop! We cannot help moving bowels it is a natural function. So is sex. In the Tao we say: no right or wrong, no good or bad, just recycling the energy.
CL: Do you still consider yourself a Christian?
MC: I do. These are not religious practices and you don't have to convert! You can be Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim and still enjoy the benefits in the framework of your own belief system, if you have one. I am Christian, but don't belong to any church. I may start one here in the Tao Garden – we already married three couples. No, the churches teach about it being bad to do this, bad to do that.
We don't have to be taught what's bad: it comes naturally. Or doing what comes naturally – they call it bad! The Western God is dominant male, very yang, enforcing law with fear of punishment, burn in hell. Society reflects this, with laws enforced by violence. Now there is imbalance between the yang of justice and the yin of compassion.
True religion is about love and compassion.
Mantak Chia with Christopher Larthe
CL: What about the balance of the sexes? You have written a best seller, MultiOrgasmic Man. What about multiorgasmic woman?
MC: Woman naturally is multiorgasmic, and one of my earliest books was about cultivating female sexual energy. Woman is yin. Yang and yin cannot exist without each other, so it is better if they are in harmony. Taoist practice is to promote harmony, because when the man lets go of semen, he is finished, but the woman is ready for more.
When both are in tune, they have increased vigor, improved stamina, enhanced sensation, unlimited whole-body orgasms. Ideal is the multiorgasmic couple. The sexual practices are self-healing for couples.
CL: Conserving energy by seminal retention is an exclusively male practice. How does a woman obtain the benefits of health and longevity?
MC: Woman does not normally lose energy through orgasm, but through menstruation and childbirth. Taoist practices for women recycle menstrual energy, with the same benefits, of long life, good health and painless menstruation as well. But even for man, seminal retention by itself is not enough; non-ejaculatory orgasm without opening the Microcosmic Orbit leads to blockages in the sexual centre, sometimes with aching, congestion, wet dreams, headaches.
Both man and woman must redirect energy through the Microcosmic Orbit, what the classics call the Small Heavenly Cycle. As above, so below – within each one of us is also a small universe, a small cosmos, yin and yang flowing together. In the act of sex, the moment of orgasm, yin and yang unite and the two heavenly cycles become one.
[Excerpted from interview originally published in Positive Health issue 42.]
Taoist practitioner and Tantric scholar, Christopher Larthe is a direct student of Mantak Chia, a certified instructor of the Healing Tao and senior teacher of Chi Nei Tsang. He has been involved in healing meditation since 1972, and founded the Zen School of Shiatsu, the London Healing Tao Centre, and Chi Nei Tsang Institute.
Mantak Chia’s Website
A Few Must Read Selections from Mantak Chia’s Dynamic Book List:
The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know
The Multi-Orgasmic Woman: Discover Your Full Desire, Pleasure, and Vitality
The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know
Healing Love Thru the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy
Chi Nei Tsang: Chi Massage for the Vital Organs
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