Immortal, Xian/Sin 仙 (Saamlawnese: Cian 仙) is a concept many people misunderstand due to TV shows and the common sources like books and media that gave people the wrong idea that being immortal means you must live very long and always “energetic” etc. In this lesson, you will learn about the real meaning of immortality and how it is used in Taoism.
The common belief is very weird; people believe you should live very long, like way over the average limit, then you are immortal. Have you seen people live 300 years and come out to show their faces? Not even the Taoist sects have a guy like that in their history; most will eventually die. So why try so hard to live like beef jerky? Don’t you freak out looking in the mirror when you are 150 years old, and your body is already like a mummy? People who fear death are the people who don’t know what’s ahead; that’s why they fear death and strive to live longer. However, if you have wisdom, you should know that it will eventually come, no matter how hard you try. To Saam Law Taoist here, it’s just foolish to become another living mummy, and it is the wrong direction for Taoists.
The goal of a Taoist is to reach their Tao or their Taoist heaven. For us, it is the Daai Law Tin. You will cultivate for a lifetime and see where you end up. If you cannot successfully go to Daai Law Tin in one go, there is a celestial court to take care of you, and you can work your way up from there. You have a second chance. There is no need to stick around in this world forever. For myself, I know I will be there, and I have seen the place; I have seen the after-death world too, and I know what the ghost world or Yuen Sun world is like; I don’t even fear death at all. If I am dying next week, so be it; I am on my trip to my destination; it’s not sad.
What is Immortal
Immortal 仙 means when anything in the human realm went into the mountain. As we have said in many posts, such as the Qi Gong Misunderstanding and the Tendon Changing post, these words in Taoism are not to be interpreted by their surface meanings; they are metaphors. Mountain means the “ground.” The body is the ground; what’s inside is your soul. Let me rephrase it into modern language and explain it again.
What’s witnessed in reality by seeing, hearing, interacting, and sensing becomes a memory that goes into your soul and heart. When you sleep, the heart will also send the memory up to your Yuen Sun, which becomes part of your life’s memory history. Anything you have learned and witnessed will never die, and it will never get old; hence, they become immortal. You remember how to do the math you learned in your teens because it has already become part of your life. The power to do math will not go away.
About my article on “How Memory Works,” you can also see that our real memory bank or the main storage for our memory is in the Yuen Sun, which keeps things forever and will never delete. You can also call it your DEEP memory. When people are about to die, they might be unable to remember things that just happened because their soul is too weak to keep any memory. Yet, they can still remember things that happened long ago because those memories are all in their Yuen Sun.
Anything that went through your soul and into the PreHeaven will become immortal because, in the Yuen Sun, that’s a PreHeaven dimension, in which time doesn’t exist. You can witness it by using the memory-recalling method. Things you recall from a long time ago will be like how they were “back then”; they don’t change even though 100 years have passed.
Also, read “Tao Gaming” to learn about how you can create spiritual embryos and gods and cultivate them to make them go back to the Yuen Sun. It’s also a thing that relates to this topic.
The Ordinary Way of Immortality
Professional studies are the way to achieve immortality for real. The fact is, the more time and effort you spend learning something, it goes into your deep memory, then you bring out the knowledge and use it for an actual purpose, which goes back to your memory to empower your knowledge further. With this going on for some time, your professional skills and knowledge will be “in your bone,” You will never forget it because you are already living it.
A great example is being a very good soldier who has served the country their whole life. When their bodies age, they still live as soldiers in the soul; the spirit never dies because it is already in their “bone.” It is the same with other professionals who take their careers seriously.
Immortality is a good focus for people because it teaches you not to waste your life being an ordinary person who jumps here and there and results in nothing achieved at the end of your life. Get out of school, then work a bit here, a bit there, never have pride or passion for your job, and want to chew on some money and then get old, having nothing but maybe two kids and a bunch of debt etc. What’s life about? Nothing. You achieved nothing; you are still like an ordinary person with nothing specialized. That is the difference between those immortals and ordinary ones. Immortals have a bigger goal and stick to it for a long time to make it part of their life. An ordinary person only lives a normal life with nothing special, makes some money and retires; that’s that. The immortal way is hard because more commitments are required, just like any profession.
What’s so good about being immortal and working hard all your life for something like a soldier? Your Yuen Sun gets cultivated, focused and aligned with you better, which means your Yuen Sun will have more things inside since you have been training it a lot. When you die, you have a greater chance of returning to the Yuen Sun instead of being a wandering ghost. When you reach the Yuen Sun, you will become what we call a ghost immortal, and there goes a better life for you for the next part of your journey. Read more on this in the “Moon” article.
In short, after you die, you get a better life than ordinary people because you have been cultivating your Yuen Sun by using a method that you have chosen (the profession that you chose to focus on). While ordinary people living an ordinary life will have much less cultivated in the Yuen Sun, so they are most likely to die and become a normal ghost, living a much less comfortable life in the after-death journey. We are not even talking about Taoists yet; this is just for normal people without a religion; that’s how life works.
The Taoist Way of Immortal
For Taoists, immortality means much more than living a life with achievements. For Taoists, our goal is already set to go to our Taoist heaven, and that isn’t going to change. Going to the Yuen Sun is nothing to worry about because we are already ensured that we will be fine as long as we are still good Taoists when we die. The lineage and celestial court will take care of that and ensure it will happen.
To be a good Taoist, we must cultivate our immortal wind and Taoist-bone 仙風道骨. That means our Taoist “bone” must be strong, as we have said in the “Tendon Changing” article. You must stand strong and always align yourself with the Tao’s rules. The Tao has set the rules for us, such as the five virtues, the ten commandments, etc. You must learn and know them by heart and always live by them; never be shaken or give in to evils and devils. After that, you should know the Tao in your soul, which becomes the “wind” that flows around you, and you will then be able to influence others around you with your “immortal wind.”
In other words, you must know the Tao’s teachings very well and utilize them when you think and process, then use them to influence others. This will help you witness the power of the Tao and build your credit in the Tao to prepare you for the later trip to your Taoist heaven. The more you do it, the more valuable you are to the Tao, and the more likely you will achieve the goal. Everything is done for a single purpose: to arrive at the Taoist heaven at the end successfully. After all, this is the primary purpose of cultivating the Tao; it’s for your trip after this life. We don’t fear death; we fear dying badly and being unable to go where we want!
Therefore, those who cultivate to become immortal Taoists must all go through the process of bone marrow washing, tendon changing, and transforming their whole system into a different state. If you keep being ordinary, your immortal bone will never be forged because your Tao Heart is not there yet. It’s all about your heart and mindset. If you are unwilling to commit and still want to hop around and try out this and that, then you will never be a true Taoist, not even to say being an immortal. Doing Qi Gong and such won’t bring you immortality, and you won’t benefit from living longer than average; it’s just a waste of time. Because at the end of your life, you will realize that you “just” lived longer, but nothing is achieved in that period. It’s sad.
In Chinese, we say 貪生怕死, which means they are greedy and have the desire to live longer because they fear death. That is exactly what those fake immortal ways are doing. True Taoists don’t fear death because they already know what’s ahead and are all well-planned/prepared.
Ordain today to become a Taoist immortal! Start forging your immortal bone and become a true Taoist who can witness the Tao yourself.
