Beginner series 1: Taoism and the Three treasures
Beginning the path of internal alchemy can be intimidating for people who are new to its unique language and structure. What to say, then, of people new to spiritual practice itself? At the behest of one of my students I’ve decided to put together a Beginner series for people who are truly just beginning the path or Taoism and have found themselves attracted to internal alchemy. My hope is to fill in the gap between starting out and the somewhat more advanced language found in the Open Door manual here on this site. So let us begin at, well, the beginning.
Taoism
There are many resources available, books and websites both, which can give a much more enlightening presentation of Taoism than I can. For the sake of laying the groundwork for internal alchemy, though, I feel we must at least touch on it.
“Taoism” as a semi-organized system of thought stems from a text called the Dao De Jing. Dao De Jing means “Scripture of the Dao and Virtue,” or “Scripture of the Dao and its Virtue.” Older styles of transliteration often present it as the “Tao Te Ching.” It is attributed to a sage named Lao Tzu, thought to have lived somewhere between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE.
The Dao De Jing presents an extraordinarily pithy view of what it means to pursue the spiritual path. It stands in extreme contrast to the rules and regulations of the Confucian analects and really quite contrasts with almost every kind of spiritual or religious instruction of its era, anywhere in the world. At a time in collective human development when most religions focused on hierarchy, structure, codification, priestly castes, scriptural adherence, ritual purity, calendrical observances, etc, the Dao De Jing reads like it could be written for an emperor as much as for a farmer. Its language is simple if mysterious, and it constantly exhorts us to be unmoved by the trappings, titles, and offerings of the material world, instead tending to our fundamental nature and spirit, where true peace is found.
Equally foundational to Taoism is the Chuang Tzu, a book that comes a century or two later and serves as a kind of allegorical exploration of Taoism’s central themes. Parables, paradoxes, and ironies are explored as a way to show how unsuited the average way of thinking is to finding peace. From the time of the Chuang Tzu all the way to the present era, most devoted students of Taoism consider the Dao De Jing and the Chuang Tzu to be their root texts.
Taoism itself developed from a confluence of many lines of thinking. It borrows terminology from much older traditions. The ideas of yin and yang, as well as the “three powers” of Heaven, Humanity, and Earth, come from mystical currents at least a millennium older than the Dao De Jing itself. As Taoism spread and continued it, like a river, absorbed these older streams of thought even more powerfully. By the eighth and ninth century CE, over a thousand years after the DDJ, the trigrams and hexagrams had been incorporated so powerfully that they became virtually inseparable from Taoist philosophy. In fact as Taoism expanded, accepting ever-more currents into its flow, it became hard to distinguish Taoism from any ancient form of classical or pre-classical Chinese spirituality. Ancient cults that worshipped myriad deities picked it up and incorporated it into their inner philosophies and practice. Ancestors, ghosts, demons, gods, nature spirits, magic powers, rituals, talismans, and many other things never explicitly mentioned in the Chuang Tzu or Dao De Jing became commonplace in Taoist lineages.
This transformation shouldn’t be considered a bad thing that somehow detracts from the heart of Taoism. It is the very heart of Taoism to be so open to many possible approaches. Because the Way cannot be defined or pinned down, according to Lao Tzu himself, its potential approaches are practically infinite. There is nothing inherently “Taoist” about making offerings at a shrine to the thunder gods, for example, but there is also nothing inherent to Taoism that says doing so can’t be a Taoist activity. In its mystery and vagueness it invites all people to sit at its table.
Origins of Neidan
Neidan is composed of two characters in Chinese, “Nei” meaning inner or internal, and “Dan” meaning elixir or alchemy as a whole. It is a very broad term that applies loosely to any form of inward cultivation, whether contemplative, breathwork, or physical, so long as the mechanisms involved are fundamentally internal. Neigong is another common term for it, “gong” meaning technique or method.
The generally-accepted earliest clear text on internal cultivation in China is the Neiye, “Internal Training,” which is thought to date to the 4th century BCE. This text contains teachings on mental cultivation as well the presence and importance of qi as vital energy. It is the oldest text we still have that clearly presents the “three treasures” or sanbao, which are qi (vital energy), shen (mind), and jing (physical essence), which I will speak more on shortly. In that sense it is the oldest surviving text that presents something akin to dual cultivation, the philosophy that the mind and body should be trained together mutually.
The Neiye likely directly or indirectly influenced numerous subsequent texts on spiritual cultivation within the purview of Taoism. Through a winding stream of texts and lineages this became somewhat consolidated in the Cantong Qi, a work dating to the 7th century CE and which codified much of the alchemical terminology that has been used ever since. In particular, the Cantong Qi really bridged external mineral alchemy with internal spiritual alchemy, borrowing terms that had largely been used to describe external alchemy in order to describe internal phenomena. This became a trend that continues to the present day. Hence, we no longer speak of actual physical Lead as containing a grain of pure gold if worked sufficiently, but instead refer to the energy of the Kidneys as Lead, and that potential gold as pure yang.
In more ancient times internal alchemy was often a part of the “thunder magic” collection of teachings. The three major liturgical lineages of Taoism are the Zhengyi, Lingbao, and Shangqing sects. Within them, neidan often appears alongside training for thunder magic. Lightning and thunder, energy and vibration, are symbolically connected to cultivating our qi. These lineages developed elaborate methods of inner cultivation, often involving visualizations, sacred formulas, hand gestures, and conjurations of various thunder entities. Today most lineages have their own blend of ritualistic elements and simpler, direct cultivation methods.
The most common streams of neidan practiced today stem from an immortal named Lu Dongbin, the famous disciple of Zhongli Quan. He is said to have received the ancient methods of neidan from his immortal master and then spent his life practicing and simplifying them so that more types of people could cultivate themselves. He eventually gifted his methods to Wang Chongyang, the founder of Quanzhen, from whence they passed to his famous seven disciples. Among them was a young man named Qiu Chuji, who went on to found the Longmen sect of Quanzhen, the most widespread form of Taoism in the world. It is virtually impossible to now learn a system or practice of neidan that has not in some way been impacted by that chain of transmission.
The Goal of Neidan
The ultimate goal of internal alchemy is to produce within us something called the Golden Elixir (jindan). As mentioned above, neidan takes its terms from external alchemy (waidan). In external mineral alchemy the golden elixir was usually represented as a bead of golden medicine strong enough to cure base metals of their baseness (thus turning them to gold) and humans of their impurities and sicknesses. In neidan the base metals are the fundamental energies of the human being, and gold represents pristine, unblemished purity. Gold of course is also connected to the sun, called literally “ultimate yang” (taiyang) in Chinese. As the external golden pill could remove all baseness from a metal and allow it to transmute into its highest nature as the ultimate yang metal, so also the inner golden elixir transmutes our mind, body, and energy into pure yang. In that state we become a yang immortal, called a celestial immortal.
The term “immortal” is a complex one and often misrepresented. The word in Chinese is usually xian. Xian(仙) is made of two characters: Ren (人) for “person,” and Shan (山) for “mountain.” Thus, originally, the term very much referred to a mountain hermit. Since even before the establishment of Taoism, mystics would take themselves to the holy mountains of China and seclude themselves in spiritual work. Someone who lived such a life would be known as a holy person, and over time the term became conflated with lofty spiritual attainment.
The meaning of xian is very similar to what is meant by the more concise term zhenren, or “true/upright person.” A zhenren is someone who has attained a level of perfection in their mystical cultivation, shedding appearances and becoming their own genuine original nature. When we say someone is an immortal we are often not suggesting they lived some extreme length of time. Sometimes, certainly, such was the case. I have myself known and met people with an unnatural lifespan that resulted from their internal work. A long life is not the actual goal, though. Rather, a long life is simply helpful for the opportunity it provides to continuously refine our spiritual accomplishments.
There are several types of immortals in Taoist metaphysics. Ghosts, for example, are a kind of immortal, because some element of the human personality survives death and continues on with apparent wants and activities. What are usually called gods in most religions are also often called immortals in Taoism. Human beings who live to or beyond the entire allotted lifespan of one hundred years are also considered a kind of immortal. Then there are those who are supernaturally long-lived, which tends to be specifically what we mean when we say the English word “immortal.” Finally there are ascended beings: humans who have attained the immortalization of their energy and cast off all transformations of life and death. This latter is called a celestial immortal, and is the highest.
A practitioner becomes a celestial immortal by creating and refining the golden elixir within. Some traditions emphasize the mind more in this process, others put more emphasis on physical practices or visualization and breathwork. Generally the elixir is seen as being made by all three: an enlightened mind, a pristine energy, and a supportively vigorous body. The resulting “substance” is a unique qi, vital energy, which allows mind and energy to perfectly unite. Mind is thus given stability and permanence while energy is given breadth and subtlety. The sense-of-self now implanted firmly into this new energy, which is actually a rebirthing of our most ancient energy, it achieves the lifespan of that energy. The mind becomes able to survive death, and the vital energy becomes subtle enough to survive with it, retaining the ability to take on form and action. The new “body” the master is thus born into can move freely in and out of his physical form. The training of this new body is part of what's called the “immortal fetus.” First the elixir is conceived, then it is expanded and trained. When it has ripened it is “born” from the top of the head and the master casts off the restraints of a physical body forever, no longer trapped in cyclic rebirth. Instead, they live within an energy of bliss far beyond the reaches of pain and suffering and yet not disconnected from our world.
None of this is possible without also attaining Wuji. Cosmically, Wuji refers to the pre-creative expanse of stillness that contained all possibilities before things were differentiated and yin and yang created. Because Wuji is timeless it exists both at the inception of the universe and in this very moment, encompassing all and everything. It is within us too, but we must walk our energies backward in time to their pre-creative state. A celestial immortal does not have elemental qi (which I will discuss in a later article), does not have light or heavy energy, does not have layers of mind and emotion. Everything is unified as a single living body that is both energy and mind at once. Just like the Wuji at the birth of the universe, they can create any qi or form of mind they wish because all potentials are present in that condition. Isn’t that strange? The most perfect condition for creating anything particularly is to first be nothing in particular. Thus an important scripture called the Qing Jing Jing says, “Looking into emptiness, I perceive it is not empty.”
In its more immediately-graspable form, Wuji also refers to a condition of being that the sage achieves. When the mind is responsive but not reactive, when aversions and attractions are given up, when preferences are forgotten, or in short when your mind is finally allowed to rest, that is a kind of Wuji. Living like this is the fundamental exhortation of the Dao De Jing. Forget the past, do not imagine the future, do not examine the present, do not try to hold or reject anything, do not create imagined meanings for things. Let the mind stop doing all that hard work! Pushed and pulled in all these different directions our poor mind is like a slave with a cruel and flighty master. We give it different orders all day long and still expect each one to be followed. In Taoism, we want our mind to finally rest.
The impulsive, creative light that emerged from primordial Wuji is the subtle creative power that manifests in the mind. It creates all our thoughts, empowers all emotions, shapes all our memories, gives form to the past, and casts shadow-figures into the future. When we train the mind to stop swinging that light around like a crazed man with a torch, it settles and pools. Like a pond, the water rests and the sediment settles to reveal translucent water. This is actually the real nature of mind. Then that light gathers within that water, and all the energy we were spending to maintain our imaginary fabrications can instead compound and build upon itself. Our energy becomes numinous and vibrant, our mind becomes clear, and ultimately the two merge into a single quiescent bliss. The gold elixir is generated spontaneously then, without fabricated methods.
The Three Treasures: Jing, Qi, and Shen
The three most fundamental ingredients of internal alchemy are physical form (jing), vital energy or breath (qi), and our mind (shen). So long as you have a physical form, the ability to control your breathing to at least some degree, and enough control of your mind to decide what to do, you can practice neidan.
Jing
My definition of jing is broader than what you might find in a Chinese Medicine textbook. I and several of my closest teachers considered it to be the essence of physical life. While this also certainly extends to the fluid substances of the body it is hardly limited to them. Instead, I think of those fluids more like the oil in a car engine. They keep everything running smoothly, and the richer and more abundant they are, the longer the engine will survive.
The actions of life are a flame, our body is the wick, and both the well of the lamp and its oil are our jing. Every aspect of living pulls on that oil either gently or strongly. When the flame atop the wick is burning wildly, the oil is sucked up greedily. When the flame is steady and measured then the oil lasts much longer. A truly soft flame protected from wind will burn for a very long time indeed. This analogy is used in Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine to explain the relationship between life and life’s reserves, which he refers to as a kind of “radical moisture,” just as Galen did before him. Longevity is in finding the right balance between flame and oil.
As a more invisible, energetic thing, jing is the source of the constant physical creation and recreation of the body. When your cells reproduce and replace each other, that is jing. When your hair and fingernails grow, that is jing. When you spit, cry, or release sexual fluid, that is also all jing. Again, it is the fuel behind the actions of life, even on the smallest cellular levels.
Like all else, Taoists see both yin and yang in the activities of jing. Yin is the stabilizing aspect of a force and yang is its motive or functional aspect. Yin jing is the reserve of our body’s essence, the oil in the well of the lamp. Yang jing is the oil in the wick being pulled up and transformed into the light of the flame. When our yin jing is healthy we are rested, hydrated, the skin and hair are full of healthy oils, the eyes are clear, our sexual fluids are full. Healthy yin jing gives us a sense of having a deep personal well of energy, like having a fully charged battery. When yin jing is depleted we don’t feel able to do anything and become easily overwhelmed. We drift into lethargy because the body is begging to rest and replenish itself.
The jing is fueled by what Taoists refer to as the seven Po, the “spirits” of the lungs. We will look at them more thoroughly in a future installment of this Beginner Series, but a cursory glance now will be helpful. There are seven things our jing needs: sleep, rest, relaxation, food, drink, sexual activity, and exercise. Five of these are yin: sleep, rest, relaxation, food, and drink. Sexual activity and exercise are yang. We will have no urge to satisfy the yang jing actions if we have not nourished ourselves with the five yin actions.
At a glance it can be hard to differentiate sleep, rest, and relaxation from each other. They are three levels of relaxed rejuvenation, sleep being the deepest, rest being middle, and relaxation the lightest. Rest is when there is nothing to do and the body and mind are awake but not being taxed in any form. Relaxation is when you might be engaged lightly in things but there is no stress or body remains in a parasympathetic state, the breath is easy, the heart rate and blood pressure are steady.
“Exercise” doesn’t just refer to working out but also, and importantly, to the concept of physical play. It is anytime we are exerting ourselves in a way that raises our heart rate and quickens our breathing, and we get bonus points if we are happy while doing it. The Taoist concept of “exercise” is more like the physical activity that children engage in. They run, jump, roll, climb, chase each other, etc. Frequent, mild exercise is favored over brief, strenuous activity. If you look at the healthiest and longest-lived modern cultures they are always doing something or other. They stand around instead of sitting, go on frequent walks, tend to their homes and properties, and in general throughout the day are always engaged in something.
Healthy yin jing is created by nourishing the body so it has the reserves to act and move. It means being rested and well nourished so that our biology can function smoothly without want. Healthy yang jing is when we are actually able to easily use that yin jing. When yang jing is healthy there is easy and plentiful interaction between the oil in the well and the oil the flame needs to keep going in the wick. When your yang jing is strong you want to get up and do things. You want to play with your children, make love to your spouse, throw a ball for the dog, and clean the house. You want to go meet your friends at that thing they’re doing, go to that concert you heard about, and work on that project you’ve been meaning to pick away at. Unfortunately in the west we tend to label such people as “restless,” but they actually just have good energy reserves and the ability to use them. For our internal alchemy we need to exist in that condition as well. If the yin jing is not plentiful then the flame burns low and we can not produce enough yang jing to cultivate and harness for the alchemy.
Looking at the conditions for healthy or insufficient jing we can image their opposites easily enough. When the yin jing is too full it smothers our warmth and we become overly sedentary. We become too accustomed or addicted to rest and never want to be spurred to action at all. The body becomes heavy with too much food and drink. Sloth and comfort become the defining principles of the day. Our desire to engage in the yang actions, and eventually even our physical ability to do so, wanes.
When yang jing is excessive it burns the wick in our lamp of life. We can not stop engaging in activity and become addicted to constant stimulation. Food and drink are seen as interruptions, sleep is light and fleeting, rest and relaxation are relabeled as stifling boredom. The yang jing fire burns too hot, too fast. It will consume too much oil and burn out the wick, causing premature aging and eventually a host of mental illnesses as well. This is called “empty heat,” burning without the reserves to support it.
A nourished body that holds its age well is the mark of strong yin jing, and the ability and desire to use that body marks strong yang jing. When they are in such balance we have the proper cauldron for creating the elixir.
Qi
The energy of our vitality is called qi. It is present in all things, not only living creatures, but everywhere forces, bonds, and transformations exist. It is the active principle of the universe, and is also not a first principle in the same ways that being and consciousness are. Instead, qi exists because of consciousness and its awareness of being. The stronger this relationship the more powerful the qi is and the more transformations it can engender. Thus, the properties of qi are most obvious in living things.
Being something of the middle ground, qi has properties of both jing and shen. It has the relationship to shen/mind that jing has to the body, giving it form and firmness. It has the relationship to jing that shen has to the body, being incorporeal and motive. The definitive trait of qi is mobility, or even better understood, transformation. It is the lightning of creation, galvanizing into activity and life. Jing and shen form the closed circuit and qi is the living electricity moving through it.
To me, qi is the great mystery. It stumps science and confounds philosophy. Why does matter move? Why do things change? What caused the big bang and why? Should a stone not always be a stone? Yet transformation is the law of the universe instead of stasis. Even the stone will become something else eventually and was something else once before.
The Dao De Jing says “The Tao gives birth to the One, the One gives birth to the Two, the Two gives birth to the Three, the Three gives birth to the ten thousand things.” Qi is the Third, and as soon as it comes into being it launches all possible variations and transformations. Jing and Shen are the principle requirements for life but everything we call Life arises from qi. It is agency itself: the light of the sun, the feel of a breeze, the rise and fall of the waves, and everything smaller and larger.
Qi is strongly connected to breath. There is nothing breathing that is not alive, and nothing dead that breathes. In the air we take in the qi of everything around us. Qi is connective and communicative. Nothing enters and leaves our body so often or in so great an amount as our breath. We inhale the exhale of all else around us and exhale what they inhale. It is the most immanent way we connect to our environment. As qi grows strong within us from internal cultivation we in turn feel ever-more connected to the world and all in it.
I mentioned above that our jing has a certain relationship to the seven Po, the spirit of the lungs. Our qi is likewise connected to the spirit of the liver, called the three Hun. The Hun are intensely connective, just as qi is. They are the essence of what it is to be human instead of animal. I call them our senses of protection, connection, and direction.
In the context of the Hun, protection means the sense of the ego-self is safe. In great difficulty this can be as simple as knowing you are physically safe. For those who have no such threats in their lives it becomes the protection of more subtle forms of selfhood: security in your family or your friend group, security at your job, or in some role or status that lends identity to you. Connection here means your sense of community and what is important to you beyond your immediate self. Direction is your sense of drive and purpose, what your life means to you or what you wish it to mean. A person in whom these three wax strong always has strong qi even if it is not refined or well controlled. In the free manual here on the website I go into much greater detail about all the organ spirits and what nourishes or depletes them.
Qi is the intermediary and middle ground of jing and shen. Its three Hun properties reflect this intermediary nature. Protection is the most jing-like of the three Hun and at its most basic level means protecting the physical self, which is the most immediate expression of jing. Direction is the most shen-like of the Hun and gives the meaning that shen clings to and uses to govern. Connection is the most qi-like Hun, branching out to give and receive within the context of a larger environment.
Like jing, Qi has yin and yang properties. Its yin properties preserve against excess transformation in order to secure form. Its yang properties transform and communicate in order to allow functionality. Yin jing preserves by clinging to its own form, while yin qi preserves by defending the stability of that form against unwanted transformation. Yang jing energizes by providing oil to the flame, and yang qi energizes by directing and using that heat for motion.
In addition to the three supportive properties from the Hun, qi has five forms of directional communication. It goes from in to out, out to in, above to below, below to above, and circulates internally. These five functions impact the communicative abilities of our mind and body alike. Someone whose qi is not properly supporting “out to in” transformations might be unable to properly digest foods or breathe and metabolize oxygen correctly. They might also be unable to understand what their senses are communicating to them, such as being unable to follow a conversation. Similar analogies can be drawn by the other four directional properties with some consideration. When the imbalance is in the yin qi associated with that motion then it impacts the body and organs. When it is in the yang qi, it impacts how our senses and nervous system communicate.
True to its transient, transformative nature, qi is difficult to directly nourish. Instead we mostly do it indirectly by using jing and shen. When yang jing is properly supported by yin jing, then the jing supports the quantity and stability of qi. When yin and yang shen are properly balanced and connected to the body then the shen supports the quality and pervasiveness of qi. In the healthy condition qi takes its stability from jing and its ability from shen.
Shen
Shen is translated as spirit but in practical cultivation it is regarded as the mind. The mind is the fundamental lens our spirit shines through. And like almost all other cultures, Taoism places the spirit in the heart. It is both the temporary self and the immortal self. It is the mind as well as consciousness. Like our own minds it is flighty and ever-shifting. In alchemy our goal is to give it firmness and force by gradually wedding it with qi.
There are as many teachings about the shen as there are branches of Taoism. As this is a beginning article I will try to simplify it into some broad strokes that most circles will at least tolerate.
“Shen” can be seen as broadly encompassing three layers of selfhood that fold over one another. At the absolute heart, the shining jewel in the depths of shen is “xing.” Xing is our original nature. It is a level of awareness so subtle and expansive that it can hardly even be called shen or mind. It forms no thoughts, has no inclinations or cares; it simply is. From this point of stillness a kind of mind capable of observation and reaction but without the obscurity of I-ness appears, like a crystal-clear water enveloping it. We call this the Yuan Shen or “original/primordial mind.” It is the immortal self, and the pure yang origin of the heart-mind.
Then, through incarnations and the development of the five organ-spirits, the Shi Shen appears. It is the interface of our Yuan Shen with created reality, both material and conceptual. The five organ-spirits are initially informed by the Yuan Shen, but splinter in the face of conflicting needs until they are more yin and distinct. They are five “compartments” of our mental activity, each with its own set of faculties and needs. They are called the organ-spirits because they are elementally connected to the five major internal organs of Taoist alchemy and medicine. Once we have the nine personal needs of the Heart, the seven essential needs of the physical body, the five alignments of intention, the three aspirations of a thinking creature, and the will to preserve them all, we have the Shi Shen. It arises as a necessary medium for these five compartments of selfhood to communicate, and then connect and react to the experiences they have in a living form.
The Shi Shen is therefore conceived in an environment that is already battling itself. The conflicts of the five spirits don’t arise in us until we are old enough for basic self-cognizance. Until then our parents are meant to take that burden and to calculate or decipher for us what we need. As they gradually transfer that burden to us we must form thoughts such as, “I want to play.” A thought that can then immediately conflict with a root-need like, “I need to sleep.” And in that brief friction, a sudden tension between two needs, the Shi Shen is born. It will decide which is more important. More important….to who? To the brand new “you” that just then formed to solve that problem. Enjoying its decision-making capacity, this new “you” will go on to make quite a muck of things.
Where our self-orientation abides is often referred to as the xin or xin-shen, the “heart mind.” There is quite a bit of ambiguity between traditions as to precisely what composes the heart mind but I think this definition suffices. The xin heart mind transforms as we transform. For most people the heart mind is their Shi Shen or fabricated mind. Their sense of self is tossed about constantly by the emotions, wants, and needs of the five organ/elemental shen. They imagine futures, wrongly recall pasts, fabricate meanings where there are none, and live within that maelstrom of constant mental activity. The vast majority of human suffering occurs in that storm when we wrongly associate our Selfhood with those passing phantoms.
The goal of alchemy is to gradually increase the yang of the heart mind. This expands and de-centralizes the Shi Shen, and connects the Yuan Shen to its source. A yang heart mind flows like water and rolls like wind. A yin heart mind is clouded and muddy, sticking to everything and keeping the impression of whatever touches it. To transform the mind into a more yang state it must “fast,” clarifying and purging itself of its own stickiness. This it does simply by becoming quiet and turning upon itself instead of thousands of things. That so simple a thing converts the mind to yang strongly indicates that its original nature is a simulacrum of the Yuan Shen, its parent. If it were the actual nature of mind to be sticky then turning it upon itself would only make it gradually stickier. The opposite instead occurs and the mind discovers its own nature to be emptiness. It was never the self, only a tool of the self that got carried away with distractions.
In general our goal as alchemists is to clarify yang and refine yin. This supports and enhances yang and allows yin to function correctly. Then these two fundamental natures support one another instead of battle. Refined, yin can receive the functionality of yang. Clarified, yang can enjoy the stability of yin. The alchemist with a transformed heart mind enjoys the undisturbed tranquil awareness of the yang-aspect while still being able to observe and interact with things, remember events, etc, provided by the form-giving yin-aspect. The yin in this instance can still hold the forms and meanings of things, but does so without elaborating upon them. The ancients likened it to a commander standing atop the ramparts of an unassailable fortress wall.
As Taoism often makes use of the term “immortal,” I should note that the Shi Shen is fundamentally what constricts our sense of self into mortality. The Shi Shen will die, our jing will dissolve over time, and our qi will return to the elements. Because the heart mind is settled in the Shi Shen our sense of self is rooted in a transient, mortal setting. That means when the Shi Shen dies your selfhood will die as well. The Yuan Shen is the thing that reincarnates. An atom of your heart mind will be taken with it, and habituated to the actions of your previous life it will create a new Shi Shen that reflects your old life but is not who that person was. It is a new person, with a new sense of self, new memories, and so forth. Because the entire previous self was created and referenced within something that would die, the new self remembers nothing of it. Only the blind impulses and habits carried over. So we go on in reincarnation life after life until we gradually change the momentum of our habits.
The alchemist clarifies the Shi Shen so that the heart mind becomes fixed to the Yuan Shen instead. Always observing Original Nature, they become established in something permanent. The coming and going of the fabricated mind with its desires and memories means little to such a person whose fingers are always touching eternity. They engage and dance with them but, like a player wearing a mask and outfit, they never confuse themselves with the character. Hence, the adepts do not fear death anymore than they fear reincarnation.