FALCON BOOKS INTERVIEWS
EXPLORING ENLIGHTENED LIVING
THROUGH HERMETIC MEDITATION
AND BEYOND
With Serge Augier
Falcon Books is presenting a series of interviews with seasoned Hermetic practitioners and those who follow a spiritual discipline. The aim being to share the wisdom, knowledge and understanding of these practitioners with those just beginning the path and as an inspiration to us all. The focus of these discussions are guided towards the spiritual seeker.
Presenting today an interview with Serge Augier also known as the “Urban Daoist” to view his website and facebook with the same name. To view his demonstrations please go vimeo, and youtube channel.
Serge has over 40 years experience in the Daoist arts. He is the current master of the Daxuan school, which is an ancient lineage of Daoist practices comprising of a wide range of skills both esoteric and practical incorporating principles of internal cultivation and philosophy and their application in daily life.
He teaches Ziranmen (natural boxing) which incorporates bare-hand and weapon training, and three well known internal arts of Bagua, Xingyi and also General Li’s Taijiquan. Serge is also a well known author on these subjects.
Terminology
- Ba Zi Mondate – Ba Zi means “Eight Characters”: each individual is born under the influence of eight basic energy potentials, based on the principles of Yin and Yang as well as the interaction of the Five Elements. The purpose of Ba Zi is to analyse, for oneself and for other people, the influences of elements that determine personalities, and more importantly to have a precise and refined understanding of ourselves in order to use our full potential.
- Celestial Mandate – The Celestial Mandate of the Daxuan School is a Complex Bazi as it carries more than 27 Characters to Interpret. This interpretation is a great help to know yourself better, in your strengths and blockages, but also to understand the others, find the source of misunderstandings that punctuate your interactions, and improve your capacity for empathy and communication.
- Wai Gong – Health exercises.
- Nei Gong – Techniques for the development of vitality.
- Nei Dan – Taoist internal alchemy.
- Xin Yi Dao Yin Fa – The research of emotional stability.
- Shen Gong – The work and training of the Spirit.
Magic Meditation
(Baopu zi) – A method used for circulating the Qi
The One resides at the North Pole,
in the midst of the abyss.
In front is the Hall of Light,
behind is the Crimson Palace.
Imposing is the Flowery Canopy,
great is the Golden Pavilion!
On its left is the gang star, on its right the kui,
waves and breakers propagate in the void.
Mysterious excrescences overlay the cliffs,
vermilion herbs enwrap the hills;
on the rocks is white jade,
the Sun and the Moon spread their light.
There you go beyond fire and pass over water,
you cross the Mystery and go past the Yellow.
Walls and gates intersect,
curtains and hangings are adorned with gems;
dragons and tigers are lined up on guard
and divine beings are at their sides.
Hello Serge and a cordial welcome from Falcon Books. Thank you for sharing with us your time and wisdom along this journey.
Some may have been wondering why I included a Daoist practitioner in relation to discussing Franz Bardon’s teachings and Initiation into Hermetics (IIH). As we know Bardon drew some of his knowledge from various different traditions and brought them together within one platform. We are aware these universal teachings and are applicable to many different areas. I would like to investigate these teachings from this particular Daoist tradition and discuss the parallels between the two systems and also the approach to inner cultivation and explore the esoteric aspects of this system.
- Falcon Books: Firstly, I would begin if you would be willing to share your fascinating childhood with us, how you first was introduced to the Daxuan tradition.
Serge Augier: Hello, I am very happy to be here and to answer your questions. First of all, let me tell you I do not talk about myself, my story, my own training, or the way I am in my own path. Only because I want to put forward my tradition, but not at all my own imaginings, or own accomplishments. That is why I never talk about my history or anything. Of course, let’s say my teacher lived with me as a kid, introduced me to Daoist practice when I was seven years old. I started practicing as soon as my teacher asked me. But, I only enjoyed practicing when I was around twelve/thirteen years of age. Between seven and thirteen I was training the basics and it was more because I was pushed towards the practice. But as soon as I reached twelve /thirteen, I started training because I wanted to, that was when I was introduced to the Daxuan tradition.
- Falcon Books: Please could explain the origins of Daxuan and the various branches within it.
Serge Augier: Daxuan Daoism, defined as Clanic ( family) Daoism which means, it is not a religious Daoism, it is not monastic Daoism. It is Clanic – meaning from a clan or family.
What is the difference?
Around the year 200 AD in China, Buddhism arrived and started to have monasteries, dancing, music and beautiful Buddhist dress and the people started to looking at it as a very interesting religion. Then most of Daoist sects began to copy and fuse Buddhism and Daoism together, thus leading to the emergence of Daoism monasteries. But some parts of Daoism, especially Clanic Daoism, (family Daoism ) stayed true to their first teachings, and never digressed, they lived more as a hermits or exorcists, or as doctors and they would not be in monasteries because they always believed that in Clanic Daoism people should live in life, in the reality of people, even if sometimes we have some retreat, where we withdraw from the world, but the actual path is non-cultural and is in life. Which means it is not about China, Japan, Britain, France, or the US. It is about the capacity to develop the best we can and these human qualities are not attached to any culture, or any tradition other than human tradition, that is in the meaning of life. All traditions should be expressed in life in your family, in your life, not being away to escape from the world.
We see monastic life as very interesting way of life of course, but at the same time, we see it as a way to escape the reality of life. We need monks to bring in more light, into the world, but a the same time to really accomplish what we are supposed to do, we have to accomplish it with other human beings, Half of our path, half of what we are supposed to do is with other human beings. If you are in too much of a retreat of this human interaction you are losing path of what you are supposed to do with yourself at this moment. You need to do and to express it with other human beings.
The actual Daxuan Practice started in 510AD it was a union of Daoist clans from Feng Shui, sorcery, exorcism, old Feng Shui tradition. All of them melted together in a complete human development tradition. It was only to survive because at the time there wasn’t any communication between them and they realised they needed to be stronger and to be together.
This kind of Daxuan Daoism, Clanic Daoism, is the work of human qualities and we cut down all the qualities of humanity into different aspects as we do in alchemy, as we do some plants, or some metal. You break down every quality and quantity down and the possibility of a human being, and you work on each of these qualities to make them each as perfect as you can then you go back to uniting these qualities. To unit the quality that you have perfected. To make sure we can be as perfect as we can, to life our life strongly and as completely as we can. The idea is to express yourself as a human being. Understand things we do not understand, to understand aspects of our humanity that we have to discover. To make all of these aspects as perfect as we can. Then our behaviour our mental introspection, our energetic development. our body, health and power, all this will develop to unite to be the perfect human being we can be. Being real in and being in phase with our celestial mandate.
- Falcon Books: You mention on your website the Shamanic side of your tradition, that it is the Yin aspect of the art and connects with the subconscious. Can you explain a little how this works, what some of the training entails and how it relates to the Yang aspect.
Serge Augier: In our tradition, we have two big aspects, one being Yin and one being Yang. The Yang aspect is where we do the in the world, this is called Neigong, Chi Gong, martial arts, any kind of Daoist magic Feng Shui, Ba Zi. But also at some point, we want to listen to the world, listen to messages of the world, listen to what the universe is telling us. For this practice we give space to our shamanic tradition, the oldest tradition, coming from the Feng Sui, old sorcerer. This tradition is telling us to take care of everything that we can feel, that we can see, that we can perceive. All of our perceptions, all of our possibility of knowledge in the world. This is not doing any more this is receiving, listening and looking.
These two aspects are very important because with the Yang aspect we go into the world choose whether we want to do it and start practicing as we want, but we do not take care of the environment or the right time cycle, of the right moment, is it the right time to divine a chicken, we don’t care. This is the Yin aspect. It is time for us to change the environment and we practice now, same with the magic if we don’t like something in the world, want to make it better, we do something with intent. This is the Yang aspect.
In the Yin aspect, if we practice energy we want to see if it is the right time if our Ba Zi and Celestial Mondate (view key for explanation) are in harmony and to train certain aspects that one, a door is open to do whatever we want. The Yin aspect will look at which direction we have to train what time, what is the best moment has the best feeling and which aspect of the tradition we should do. Because in the Yin shamanic aspect, you first have to listen to the world and go with it. To train whatever you can train at this precise moment. In the Yang tradition, as most people now do, you just impose your training onto the world. These two traditions are very important, but the Yin, Shamanic tradition has to survive more because today most people don’t know, don’t remember this path and this path is amazing to develop human qualities.
In the Shamanic tradition we will connect with our inner light, inner God, we learn how to go into trance, where we connect with something a lot thinner and more subtle than the coarse aspect of life, where we connect with the invisible world. To have better information and to accept our divinity, our complete divine self and let go for a little while our mundane self.
The Shamanic aspect connects us with the right direction, the right space, the right power points, we can have correct power points all over the world where there are places that give us power and connects us to the symbolic animals, material, plants and spirit. It connects us with the changes of weather. The Shamanic path is very, very linked to the listening and improving our interaction with the world and our environment.
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Falcon Books: I have noticed how there are parallels between Franz Bardon’s IIH within steps 1- 3 and your teachings. For example, within your school (Ba-men Daxuan) 8 gates you cover Health exercises (Wai Gong), Techniques for the development of Vitality (neigong), Taoist internal alchemy (Nei Dan),The research of emotional stability (Xin Yi Dao Yin Fa), The work and training of the Spirit (Shen Gong). Could you define these terms and how you approach these aspects within your tradition?
Once again one of the best aspects of Clanic Daoism of the Daxuan school, is that we don’t just try and train, not knowing what we do, not understanding exactly how we are. Just do a little movement and expecting some result. We understand the human being as being a body as being as an animal, we have basic needs and have basic compulsions that we have to listen to, but we are energetic. We are vitality and breath, with each breath we exchange with the world, and we are mind pure spirit which does not really live with us because ‘spirit’ is really in our reality. Spirit is something we have but is not in our reality, but we start experiencing the Spirit which is for real, meaning with our organs, our body, it is not spirit anymore it, it is ‘not mind’ anymore it is already emotion. We know that we have a body, breath, vitality, emotion, mind, invisible spirituality. Knowing that and studying these different aspects
We decide as a Daoist tradition to study each of these aspects and to and to make them as good as they can be. My body, of course, I will exercise it. It is pretty simple, but I will exercise the same, my breathing capacity. The mind and the way it is functioning, the internal connections, my internal functioning and all of the aspects that makes me cleared emotionally, of sentiments and perception of the world. By training each of these aspects in a different manner, I will make them clear and as perfect as I can. Then after, slowly I will go towards practices, that are united with breath, body, mind, spirituality and I will work as one. But first as in alchemy, I will cut down all of my qualities all of my aspects of myself into little pieces and I will train each of the pieces. I will not confuse my breathing practice, with my mind practice, with my body practice, with my feeling practice. By doing this and taking each time just to the amount of what I can do. I can really evolve and really change. Which means I will not spend forty years doing everything but doing nothing as we know to do very well. But I will in fact train and evolve in each aspect of my life by doing this, slowly I will not function in the same way, I will not behave in the same way, I will not feel the same way. My health will be completely different. My relationship to the world and to other people will be completely different. I will for real evolve every week, every month and every year of my life.
a. Health Exercises (Wai Gong)
Serge Augier: Once again we need to train the Wai Gong – exterior training. Exterior training it is really making my tendons, bones, stability, coordination, strength, grounding, everything pushed to the maximum. It is not a feeling, it is not a thinking of evolution because it is Wai Gong is physical which means if you train it you will be strong, you will be fast, your body with be grounded which means if somebody tried to pull or push you, you will not move and this you can test it with anyone. All of my students all over the world, after a couple of months, they are very stable even if they are big or they are small or they are women, or if they are 50 or 80 years of age, or age 22. It is the same quality you will develop. Good coordination, strong grounding and overall very good health.
b. Vitality (Nei Gong)
Serge Augier: Then when the body is strong you want to do the same training as the body, but not thinking about the body but thinking about the breathing. These exercises where you move the body freely because you have experienced it already but putting all your intent not putting the feeling of the body but putting the breath and vitality then you start to do internal training we call it Nei Gong.
c. Internal alchemy (Nei Dan)
Serge Augier: After that we have become vitalized full of energy and needs to be trained without the body, to push it to its limits, to push it to the maximum we can do this is Nei Dan. Nei Dan is alchemy and takes all the possibility to have developed in Wai Gong and Nei Gong, take all the abundance of Qi that you did, having a new life and new eating habits, new sleeping habits and all the things that we teach in the Daxuan Tradition. Then you will sit and make this Qi condense, sublimate change and overall push your Qi or vitality to the maximum of your potential that you have in your Celestial Mandate. This is Nei Dan.
d. Emotional stability (XinY i Dao Yin Fa)
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Serge Augier: Then before we can really change the mind we have all this energy moving pushing away and pushing out emotions all over. We need to train emotional stability because being emotional is, in fact spending more Qi than most of the physical activity we have. This emotional stability is trained with Xin Yin Dao Yin Fa (emotional stability), is the dissolving of our emotional troubles. It is done by the body, the mind and the breath altogether.
e. Spirit (Shen Gong)
Serge Augier: It is only there we can deeply train the Shen Gong (Spirit) the training of the mind and has nothing to do with meditation, like Wai Gong (health training) is training the mind, just making the mind available for you. Another time a life of a human being, making the time to look for the season for harvesting and maybe need more time. Today life is too fast and our mind completely escapes our control. We just need to make our mind available for focusing for at least an hour or at least two hours as to the basic focus as to seven minutes. Shen Gong is just training the mind and making sure the mind is available for us to be used.
Then after not only do we have these 5 different forms of training, the Wai Gong, Nei Gong, Nai Dan, Xin Yin Dao Yin Fa, Shen Gong. But we have further training which focuses on uniting of these aspects. As soon as these aspects have been trained a little, of course, to train better we do not have a real order. I really believe these aspects of training can be trained together as soon as you start and they will work in synergy.
It is true if your body really hurts it is impossible to take care of you mind, or of your emotions, if at the same time you train your mind and you train your body, you train your breathing (Nei Dan) you train your Xin Yin Dao Yin Fa; each of this training will help the next one and you will have what we have in the Daxuan Tradition, a complete global clan teaching which pushes you to move pretty quickly which makes you very motivated. To have personal experience of the success of training, which is the only real motivation you should have. Never listen to a teacher, only listen to try to do what the teacher tells you to do and then by your own experience you can see if the practice is good or not.
We need again to give some good space to common sense, if you train for a year and you do not feel anything then something is wrong. If you train for 10 years and you are pretty much the same person something is really wrong, you should have stopped in the first year.
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Falcon Books: Do you work with the Elements within your tradition? If so, please could you explain their use application in daily life.
Serge Augier: We do work with the 5 Elements. In the Daxuan Tradition, we use the Five Element association, diagnosis, Chinese and Taoist medicine and the Ba Zi. There are 4 Elements in magic only because one activity is used by the practitioner, the others are the accompaniment of the world. Also with the 5 Elements, each can be associated with colours, emotions, planets, organs, sound, senses, a lot of things and has many associations. It is very interesting because you can associate a lot of things that you see in the world and realise why they are like this at this moment and how they affect on yourself.
It is such a huge amount of our training that it is difficult to make it simple like this. Let us say the Ba Zi, with the days and the hours of the days, you have Elements associated with which pushes you to be better and more active, or weaker at a certain point in time. Then you know exactly when to do and what. At the same time depending on your own elements that you have in your Mondate or in your Ba Zi, you know the best activity and what works best for you. At the same time, you can know when to escape a certain bad cycle by knowing in advance that because you can look at the 10,000-year-old calendar to see what is coming up and how to prepare for what is coming up. This has nothing to do with knowing the future. It is only understanding the cycle of life and using the 5 elements analysis that connects with the Gua the Ba Gua and the Yi Jing to go with life as much as we can, with the cycle of time as much as we can and with the person around us that associated to the elements also, to make sure that we go with the non-resistant path the Wu way.This idea with going “with” not “against”. It was badly translated as “non-action” which as soon as you practice you know that you are acting all of the time. It is not “non-action” but is in fact “non-resistance.” You go with the world and the people and this means it is so much easier to live your life and the 5 Elements is used for this. But it is such a huge subject that we need to do one interview only to cover the Elements.
For us the 5 Elements are important in the Traditional medicine, for diagnosis, usage, a cycle of time and treatment, but the 4 Elements, they are really used to see the natural functioning and accompaniment of life, the natural aspect of what is created in the manifestation of all things. The 5 Elements, which are normally translated as the “5 movements” or “5 Concepts,” have nothing to do with actually made or real things that we can perceive, they are concepts of association. The 4 Elements, we use too, in magic, in terms of external alchemy because they have actual accompaniment which the world is made up from. The 4 Elements are real and can be seen in the world. The 5 Elements are mostly ideas of movement and a way to qualify the movements in the world. It is very different and we use both because the 4 Elements come from our Shamanic past and the 5 Elements allow us to actually as a way to associate in Daoist metaphysics to most of the things in life.
b) Are there many differences between the Western and Eastern approach to the elements?
Serge Augier: For me, the biggest difference between a Western and Eastern approach to the Elements is that first of all the Chinese 5 Elements are not “elements”. The 5 Elements are not even called “elements” in the Chinese, they are movements/interactions a way to qualify interaction that you have in the world. They are a way to see and to qualify movement in the reality that we can see. They are only in movement and action, they are not static. In the Western elements even if you have this kind of movement between the elements, each element can be defined and seen, this is really different from the 5 Elements (which are not elements) they are just movements, a way to associate each and all things of creation, to compare, judge, control, produce, or just understand different aspects of our reality. The 5 Elements of the Chinese approach are not elements they are movements, The 4 Elements of Western approach are in fact real Elements that you can see, that constitute the basis of our reality.
6) Falcon Books: What would you describe as the basics required for a progressive meditation practice?
Serge Augier: It is very important to realise that meditation or everything we have talked about today, consciousness, awakening, all of these are really based on fantasy. Because everybody wants to be awakened, but if you are not ready to be awakened, the awakening of the reality of life will just be a source of depression and unhappiness.
We have in our tradition 3 levels of meditation
- The first one is really the most important aspect, it is training enough, your mind with your vitality to make sure you appreciate each aspect of life and each aspect of how you live in life. Which means the first level of meditation of our Tradition is to be happy. It is to accept life as a happy life and to accept your life as the experience you have now. By doing this (even if your life is not so happy) you see the best you can see in your life and you see each moment of your life as something new and live your life the best you can live it, even if it is not an easy life. This is important you need to simplify and enjoy your life.
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Then you can go to the second stage where you will be put in confrontation, with the reality not what you think the reality is, but the actual reality. The unimportance of you as an individual. The realisation that we are here for so little time and most of us will be completely forgotten and if we don’t do something in our life, it is completely lost. The reality of awakening is not fun, it is not, it is not floating with an orange dress. It is in fact, realising that life is impermanent, that nothing is really important and the fact we have to respect this time of manifestation, this incarnation that we have to do something with it before it is going to go. And this awakening can be really harsh, then you had better train the first aspect first, by doing the first aspect first – means you already see the positive aspect of life. Then you can awaken to it.
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The third aspect of meditation is to clean up, or perfect the Celestial Mondate which is our path, our life it is our personal legend, it is what we are supposed to do in life. Then most of it is tainted by family troubles, country traumatism, or time traumatism. You have plenty of suffering inside that you need to clean up, so you don’t leave it in the world for the next generation. This is the third level.
To summarise, the first level is to make yourself happy to realise you can live your life a lot better than the way you can do now. Do and enjoy as much as you can the life that you have. The second level – now that you are happy to realise that you have something to do and that you now have to wake up to the reality, to see the fact a lot of things that you were thinking were not what you were thinking. This is the second one, the actual awakening, after that now that you have every possibility, and good tools available to you, you can clean up your own past self and Celestial Mondate, family troubles, time and cycle traumatism. To evolved and to leave nothing bad in the world only the light. These are the three levels of our meditation aspect.
7) Falcon Books: I wonder if you could explain a bit about the “standing post” posture (Standing Meditation) and how it was the beginning and the end of your tradition. Could you expand upon this?
Serge Augier: The standing postures are interesting but they should not too much and it is only when you start they are the simplest of exercises, where you cannot make mistakes because it is pretty simple to do. At the same time, you need motion too. The standing posture and all the basic exercises are the first you learn. But when you have been training for a long time, when you have been solving most of the troubles of your own incarnation, you realise that going back to these basics is exactly what you want to do. Which means training for a long time and after some years of training, you go back to these very simple things. And standing postures are in fact the accomplishment of movement posture because when you move in all directions and you move and do exercises in every direction, when you train your coordination you ground your Yin and Yang force, you realise after a while you do not need to move too much. You do not need to do much movement and that with very small motion you can express everything.
Then standing simple motions, these are the reality of an accomplished teacher, an accomplished master. As it is the reality of a really first beginner. The standing posture is a series of basic movements, they are what you do when you start and also when you are training for a very long time.
8) Falcon Books: You are a teacher of Martial Arts most famously Ziranmen which is extremely rare. Could you share how meditation and spirituality are practiced within the martial arts?
Serge Augier: By test, because when I was a kid I was not very strong and I was very skinny and I had everything thing to be a very good victim. My teacher pushed me which was his speciality the Martial Arts. In our tradition is it is only a very small part, but very good. Our Martial Arts tradition was not at all built to be a martial art. I was only a way not to let anybody come against us and between us and our practice. Practicing this, our evolution practice. You realise that it needs time and commitment and for a long time you spend training. You cannot have someone with bad intent come and hurt you because when they hurt you they destroy most of the practice you have done. You cannot let this happen. That is why our Martial Art is very simple, very efficiently orientated and is there only to make us and our family safe. It was never intended to be pretty or flowy, or with beautiful forms, it is only developing basic qualities. In our Martin Arts we have 3 qualities only:
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The first one, and for me of course, the most important, is the intent. Fighting is about going or not going. At some point, you need to do something that is really weird as a human being, which is to hit or attack another human being for your own defence. This first aspect, going or not going, accepting to really to defend yourself. This has to be taught to be amplified and has to be balanced because you do not want to become violent, you do not want to exert a bad amount of force when you don’t need to do it and you need to be mainly peaceful. But at some point you need to accept that at certain specific occasions where you are in danger you need to go, there is no time for excuses, there is no time for fear, time for fantasy. You just need to go and fight and defend yourself or your loved ones. The first quality of our boxing is to “go or not go,” the capacity to use your intent to go for fighting.
- The second quality, this is the speciality of our school which is embodied by me and by all of my instructors at least by most of my students is the power of impact. Before anything else before movement, ability or stamina, precision, whatever, is the actual force of impact. Even if you are slow, if you grab any part of your opponent and you hit strongly enough, it will stop. It can be strongly hitting his arm, it can be just hitting his shoulder, it can be just hitting any part of his body. If there is enough power they will actually stop, this is the first thing we develop in the martial arts is impact power and honestly, I have been training for a very long time now, I have never seen anybody who could take our power and just think it was ok. It is a very, very important part of what we do. We just train the capacity to express the maximum power we can express as a human being.
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The third quality that we train in the natural boxing is “all the rest”, meaning the combinations, stamina, the training to guard your head, the tendons, the “ iron Shirt,” the “iron palm,” we have a lot of things.
In conclusion, firstly we train mental-mind, “going not going.” secondly, pure impact power (which made us very famous), and then “all of the rest”, this is our family boxing, it has been expressed in different ways, depending on the teacher. It is a training that some of my students do because they want to, it is not a huge feature. It was for a long time and still today my speciality, only because my teacher pushed me towards this path more than others, in the beginning, being very light skinny and weak kid. He really thought that the marital art will really help me.
This is a very hidden art that we do not share easily, but it is pretty amazing.
It was very good to answer all of these questions and I have always been interested in all of the traditions. I study myself some of Bardon’s tradition which I find very interesting and it is always good to meet other people. If anybody is interested in what I do, they can easily find my Website I hope I will meet some of you one day.
To find out more about Serge please view links Daxuan Mandate, Website, Facebook, and youtube. Stay tuned for future titles on Daoist Magic.
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