The Holy Grail: A Literal Cup or Metaphorical Chalice of the Divine?

Finishing my undergrad in Psychology after years of Tai Chi, Qigong practice and other Asian practices, I asked my neuroscience instructor if there was a pathway between the perineum and the spine. He gave me the strangest look and that was the first time I realized that much of my knowledge from Tai Chi wasn’t going to hold up to anatomical scrutiny.

That said, there are still many important contributions to be gained from many ancient practices.

Anyway, I wasn’t a total idiot for asking about that pathway, here is a medical study that discusses Davinci’s thoughts on the subject and one of his drawings pictured.

Moreover, that pathway is ubiquitous throughout ancient texts from India to China and even in Catholicism, which is what captivated me. It is such a part of world knowledge and especially religious knowledge but it is rarely discussed. So I had to investigate it further. Experiential knowledge from my own practice with Tai Chi and internal alchemy led me to believe that the search for the Holy Grail was more about the dan tian and the kua than it was about a cup. I always found those stories about the search for the Holy Grail kind of dumb, although people are that dumb, ever watch antique road show? I mean seriously, what would be so significant about a cup that Christ drank from? Magical powers? It all just sounds so silly. Even the Davinci Code adds a spin on the theory of the Grail as a bloodline from Jesus that is still alive today. I find that hypothesis equally ridiculous. However, I would not put it past the multitudes of non-initiates who think they can attain religious growth or supernatural power from these comic book stories.

What I do find compelling and more believable is what if these ancient seekers of the Grail actually thought that Christ was a yogi or something similar, and that the Holy Grail was actually inside one’s body and spiritual development was attained through cultivation of the body? After all people are born from a woman’s womb which is located in that exact region that happens to look like a cup (see picture below).

To me the idea of self cultivation to bring about spiritual development is central to many Asian religious traditions to name just two, Indian yogic practices and Taoist bodily practices both of which were present during the time of Christ. However, it is not explicitly linked to Christianity but there is evidence that religious initiates did travel to India from Jerusalem. But you have to dig a little deeper and take into account that some how there is no documentation about Christ’s life between him at 12 and 33, early Christian symbolism has some evidence and some of Davinci’s drawings and writings do as well. Then maybe it is hidden in Christianity as well? This topic is interesting to me because as a Westerner, and the trend in the West for some reason is/was to separate the mind and body into two distinct halves, whereas the East chose to keep them unified. I am really not sure why but I think this is why so many Westerners pursue Eastern martial arts, and other mind body practices like Yoga. For a paper on the Cartesian mind body-duality and its role in medicine read here.

I believe that early Christian teachers actively sought to suppress body cultivation methods, like Yoga and Tai chi, and the idea that Christ may have practiced them, which is why we do not have any accounts of Christ’s missing years even though Christian writers have every last detail of his life documented except those 18 years. This might not be so outlandish when you include how secretive the church is and the mysticism of many of its sculptures,symbols, and texts for example, there is a pine cone in the courtyard of the vatican. Pine cones have long symbolized human enlightenment through the third eye or pineal gland and carvings of them are also found on staff of the Pope, the Egyptian God Osiris and in many religious motifs around the world (I will tie in the pineal gland to the dan tian in my next essay). Adding to this that St.Thomas began a church in Kerala, India, in 52 AD adds some credence that there was a connection between India and Jerusalem during Christ’s life and that the church knows more about internal alchemy than it shares.

Let’s not forget that the church actively sought control over people and knowledge and there are even accounts of people being killed for printing and translating the bible. It also shows that the West had access to this knowledge but sought to keep it from public view while in Asia it was more available.

Connecting it back to Taoism

In Taoism, there are what are called the 3 treasures, Jing, Qi, and Shen.

• Jing 精 "nutritive essence, essence; refined, perfected; extract; spirit, demon; sperm, seed"
• Qi 氣 "vitality, energy, force; air, vapor; breath; spirit, vigor; attitude"
• Shen 神 "spirit; soul, mind; god, deity; supernatural being"

These need to be stewed in the cauldron to refine the elixir of life which is held in the dan tian along with the three treasures. Is it possible that the “caldron” referred to in Taoist texts is what the people in the West called the Holy Grail.

From Wikipedia: "The (late 16th century) Journey to the West novel provides a more recent example when an enlightened Taoist patriarch instructs Sun Wukong "Monkey" with a poem that begins:

Know well this secret formula wondrous and true: Spare and nurse the vital forces, this and nothing else. All power resides in the semen [jing], the breath [qi], and the spirit [shen]; Guard these with care, securely, lest there be a leak. Lest there be a leak!

Keep within the body! (tr. Yu 1977:88" 

Storing seminal fluid is also vital to Christian thought and Leonardo Da Vinci adds some credibility to this thinking as does the coitus interruptus views of the Catholic church. I think the reason is that to ancient peoples sperm was sacred and I can’t speak for the Catholics but beyond a shadow of doubt the Chinese thought that storing it was the only way for your spirit to leave your body and become immortal.

So if you are a spiritual person and believe that this earth is the place where you train to attain higher levels of consciousness then many religions point directly to your dan tian and my belief that it is also the Holy Grail as to where you cultivate your bodily essence and lead a spiritual life. Having said that, I have explored many aspects of these practices of self cultivation and I am certain there is some benefit to your health and longevity but I am uncertain as to whether bodily fluids are supposed to be kept internally and heated through mind-bodily cultivation which purportedly leads to immortality.  Next I will write more specifically on the whole process of attaining immortality.

For more information on this topic you can read:

Eva Wong's Cultivating Stillness

Stuart Alve Olson's The Jade Emperor's Mind Seal Classic

Principal Vs Pinciple

Most religious people believe you must believe in an omnipotent "Principal" to get into heaven, or at the very least, it is a prerequisite to be saved from eternal suffering.

According to Online Etymology.com, principal as a noun originally meant  a  "ruler” or  “governor." It also meant  a “person in charge of a public school." On the other hand, since the 14th century, principles have been seen as a rule or basic set of truths. Said more simply, a principal is a high-level authority figure who administers laws or principles, while a principle is a basic set of fundamental truths.

You probably see where I am going with this, but it is something that I have not seen discussed much. Within religious groups there is clearly a desire to differentiate one group from another by claiming allegiance to a specific set of deities and rituals, while also showing that the other group is less than holy and even that they are evil. This is classic, “in-group, out-group” stuff, which many humans are trying to get beyond. Yet we keep bumping into it.

Regardless of the basic instinct to continue excluding others I see no spiritual reason to continue it. In my own spiritual exploration I have been trying to understand where to place my faith, or hang my hat and this line of inquiry has led to me try to lay my faith on principles thus obviating the need to “out-group” someone based solely on the name they have chosen as their ruler. I would argue what is the point of the name of the leader at all, except beyond in-group/out-group. I see no value in it at all. I know the second commandment in the Judeo-Christian bible there is a rule which states that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” While there are two others that also place great value on the name of god. However, those commandments hold little spiritual value to me.

Regardless of how much value I place on it or someone else does, why is it important to acknowledge name of the principal? If god is almighty and omnipotent, then why would they care for such trifles in a name? Wouldn't the person/god you worship love you even more if you studied the principles that he/she/it has established?

Taking this line of thinking further, there are literally hundreds of names of God, and add to that the many different cultural pronunciations, along with metaphors and such. Taking all this into account it is quite a foolish activity, trying to exclude people from heaven because they do not use the same 900 codes words that your group does.

Now if someone, does not heed a principle that you have established as important to you or your belief system, for instance, I follow many Taoist principles, and one I find particularly important is that the human body is a microcosm of the universe, the macrocosm. Thus harmonizing your body with nature is a legitimate path to harmonizing with the greater procreative life force or the creator of the universe. So it follows, if someone shows no value for their own body then they would not be abiding by the principles I believe are deeply important to being a spiritual person. Taking another angle on this line of thinking, lets us say there is a group of people who call their practice Yoga, and follow their own energetic system. Does this mean they are wrong because they use a different set of names? Since we have established that they follow the same principle, health of the body. Should I, following a Taoist approach condemn them?

I remember having a conversation about religion with a Christian fundamentalist and he said if you don’t follow Jesus, and his specific denomination you will go to hell. I questioned him further, first I asked him to listen to a story I had heard a long time ago about a Methodist preacher, who witnessed the freeing of concentration camp detainees. It goes, the preacher said that many of the ex-detainees were beating up the guards but a lone women was not participating in the melee. He went to her and asked her why she was not taking vengeance on her tormentors. She said, it would make her like them. So I asked my fundamentalist friend, is she going to hell because she is Jewish? He said without hesitation, yes. I was floored. To this day that story tears me up because I am not so sure I could be like her. I know that I might not be able to control myself if the tables were turned on my tormentors. I know if I were in her situation, I would be counting the days and looking for any possible opportunity for revenge. Hell, I do it when someone cuts me off on the road. But yet, in some perverse world, she will be in hell suffering all because she didn’t proclaim one of the correct names of god as her savior. Puzzling. I told my friend if the god in his head would think that woman was not a saint than I would have nothing to with said god. That conversation with the fundamentalist was formative in my own thinking about god, worship and religion.  But honestly it has taken me a long time to reconcile these thoughts that lead to the proverbial fork in the road.

Pascal's Wager and the “Live a Good Life” Quote

Then I came upon a fork in the road with Pascal pointing in one direction and the “Live a good life” quote heading in another. Pascal’s wager asserts that the loss of not believing, eternal damnation, greatly outweighs the very limited earthly pleasure you could gain. The "Live a Good Life" path states that if you live a good moral life and if there is/are a god/gods and they abide by moral principles they will not care about your devotion to them. If they do not have principles than what kind of god are they and you shouldn’t want to believe in them, and if there is no god, you still win because you have spread that morality to your community.

At 51 years old, I have worn out many shoes walking on the “live a good life path" and I know it is good for me on every level I can imagine, and deep, deep down in me I can’t believe that the most omnipotent entity in the universe would condemn me, knowing how hard I work on principles and yet somehow mispronounced one of his/her/it’s 900 or so names.