Master Mantak Chia first learned of these advanced inner alchemy practices over fifty-five years ago while he was in his first year of high school in Hong Kong, China. Mantak and his schoolboy friends enjoyed reading kung fu comic books and idolized the comic book characters as their ideals and role models. They were all fascinated and inspired to be one of their comic book heroes with all their incredible skills and abilities as any young Chinese boy would.
Then one day as they gathered at one of their comic book sessions (Master Chia still reads them to this day) they heard about a great Taoist sage who came down from the Himalayan Mountains from northern China. This Taoist sage was forced down from the mountains because of the Chinese Counter-Cultural Revolution that was happening at that time. The Chinese army was literally bombing many of the Himalayan Mountain areas where Buddhist monasteries and Taoist Temples were built into the mountains for training and higher level practices. There were several thousand monasteries destroyed and millions and millions of Buddhist monks and Taoist sages killed during this period.
The Taoist sage, White Cloud who was there in a Himalayan cave could no longer do his higher-level practices because of the bombing around the surrounding areas. He had been living there in a cave for the previous thirty-years after studying as a Taoist adept in a northern Taoist Temple. He had left the temple seeking high-level practices, which he could not obtain from the temple and was advised from his Head Master to seek a mountain sage to complete his training to be an Immortal. White Cloud went south to Hong Kong, a British colony at the time to resume his practices. So Mantak and his friends told one another that they were all going to meet the Taoist sage the following Tuesday across town to find out if he could teach them kung fu like in their comic books. That Tuesday arrived but the only one who came was little Mantak and he knocked on the door. The door opened and the sage appeared. He looked at the small boy and said, “I am going to teach you the Tao.” So for the next four years two to three days a week the Taoist sage taught little Mantak all of the Internal Alchemy (Changing one substance into another) formulas of the now Universal Healing Tao System.
This system was founded by Mantak Chia forty-years later from the First Level of the Living Tao, Cosmic Inner Smile to the Immortal Tao’s final formula, Reunion of Heaven and Man. Luckily for the Universal Healing Tao students Master Chia was born in the year of the Monkey (monkey see, monkey do) and can copy anything with the ability to research and develop techniques to perfect the formulas with a Western understanding having a Chinese Christian background and Western anatomy training; I think the Taoist somehow knew that when he first saw him.
Finally at the end of his senior year of high school before going back to his home in Bangkok, Thailand Master Chia said goodbye to his Taoist Master after learning the whole inner alchemy system from him. His Master smiled and told him one day he would move to the United States and he would start teaching the Tao and its Way. And he made Mantak promise that he would first teach the Tao to the Chinese there for three years before he was to teach the Tao to the Westerns. Master Chia moved to New York City nearly twenty-years later in 1976 and fulfilled his promise and taught the Chinese in China town for three-years then began teaching the Westerns and started forming the Universal Healing Tao System with the Healing Tao. The Taoist sage died from liver cancer a few years later after Master Chia left for Bangkok at the end of his senior year. When White Cloud was in the mountains for thirty years he would leave his body continuously and do the Immortal Tao meditations for five-years at a time after sealing his five senses with bees wax so insects could not enter his body openings. So, he was not eating any solid food but rather absorbing air (oxygen) and the dew from the air (water) through bone breathing as taught in the Universal Healing Tao Bone Marrow Nei Kung formulas. When he was forced to move from his mountain cave and leave his out of the body practices and enter into civilization again he resumed eating. This became a problem and every time he ate anything he always felt a pain underneath his right rib cage, and he would complain to Mantak about it. What the Taoist sage did not know the pain was in the gall bladder which ceased to function and was rotting because the bile received from the liver had hardened in his gall bladder; this was brought on by his long abstinence from food while leaving the body for five-years at a time. The bile from the liver goes to the gall bladder, which regulates it into the stomach for digestion purposes but its regulation is only triggered by food that enters the stomach. No food, no regulation, and then the bile hardens and the gall bladder ceases to function and rots. You do not need the gall bladder to live but it sits on the liver and will rot the liver and then you die. That is what happened to the Taoist sage. You cannot live without the liver; it is one of the five vital organs. How do I know this? I had to have my gall bladder removed two-years ago after a gall bladder attack for three days (I could hardly breathe, drink water or sleep) and the doctors told me if I did not have it removed I would die. I had the same condition that the Taoist sage had having three prolonged water fasts (32, 40 and 48 day water fasts) over a twenty-year period. I had the same pain every time I ate underneath the right ribcage for the previous ten-years. This is a condition many sages, rimpashays and holy men have, including the Dali Lama who had his gall bladder removed.
Long before White Cloud met Mantak Chia, in his first six-years in the Himalayan Mountains, he wandered around looking for a sage to teach him the high level practices and he nearly starved to death. There is no food at that altitude in the mountains, only cold air that is ideal for the steaming practice in the Kan and Li of the Immortal Tao practices. Finally he stumbled into a cave where bacteria does not grow and saw a sage in a sitting meditation posture and he was not moving or visibly breathing. White Cloud could not believe his eyes, he prostrated himself, prayed and showed praise continuously for weeks and months but nothing happened, as the sitting sage did not move. Then finally the meditative sage who had been out of his body opened his eyes. You will never guess what he did next. He closed his eyes after seeing White Cloud and left again. White Cloud went crazy and prostrated himself, prayed and showed praise continuously again. Weeks went by and White Cloud was beside himself with nowhere to go and no funds to get there. After another month or so the meditative sage opened his eyes again and seeing White Cloud still there out of pity he decided to teach him the Inner Alchemy system of practices which over ninety-years later has become the Universal Healing Tao System.