Chapter Nine : Sending on Spirits in Transition 26

The Founding Master attended an evening dharma meeting and, observing each participant in the congregation one by one under the light of a lantern, said, “The energy that rises from each of you is different. There are those among you who have accumulated much spiritual cultivation, whose turbid energy has completely subsided and who have only perfectly pure energy rising; there are those who have more pure energy and less turbid energy, those who have equal amounts of pure and turbid energy, those who have more turbid and less pure energy, and those who only have turbid energy.” He continued, “The greedier a person is, the more turbid is his energy, which prevents it from rising high. When such a person completes his life, he will be unable to receive a human body again but instead may be reborn among the animals or insects. On the other hand, if a person, though not having much greed, concentrates on knowledge while ignoring inner spiritual cultivation and outward creation of merit and good affinities, his energy, being light, rises easily, but since it lacks weight, he may be reborn among the asuras or birds. Therefore, if a practitioner awakens to and knows his mind, and, after knowing it, fosters the mind purely and practices correctly by discriminating the upright from the perverse, then finally the numinous elixir will form and he will not be swept into the wheel of the six destinies and will be able freely to choose his next body; or he will attain the ability to concentrate on cultivation alone, sloughing off his physical body and traveling throughout the dharma realm of empty space via that numinous elixir alone