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New Thinking Allowed Audio Podcast
The Nature of Chi Energy with Peter Meech
01:01:26
The Nature of Chi Energy with Peter Meech Peter Meech is an award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer. Peter is also an author and playwright, and the recipient of a master’s degree from Stanford University where he won the Stanford Nickel Fel...
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A
I would like to expand the definition of resonance because I think when there is resonance, true resonance, then it's much easier to share energy and thoughts.
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Keep watching to learn more.
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Book 4 in the New Thinking Allow Dialogue series, Charles T. Tart, 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology. Now available on Amazon.
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New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit, the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingalowed.org.
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Thinking allowed conversations on the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove.
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Hello and welcome.
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I'm Jeffrey Mishlove.
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D
Today we'll be exploring the nature of QI energy.
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B
My guest is Peter Meech, who is.
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D
An award winning screenwriter, director and producer.
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B
He is also an author and a playwright. He received a master's degree from Stanford University where he won a Stanford Nickell Fellowship in screenwriting.
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Peter's memoir, Mysteries of the Life My.
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Apprenticeship with the Qigong Master chronicles the first seven years of of Peter's apprenticeship with the Qigong Master in Toronto, Canada. It's been translated into several languages.
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D
Peter's based on the east coast and.
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B
Now I'll switch over to the Internet video. Welcome Peter. It is a pleasure to be with you.
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A
It is such a pleasure to be with you too, Jeff.
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B
You've got an amazing story and I feel like having read your memoir, I feel like I've known you already a long time. And of course part of that is because we have mutual acquaintances in the city of Toronto where you are now located and where your story takes place.
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A
That's right, yeah. And Ted Mann, being a mutual friend, I'm trying to figure out if you met him before I did, but I certainly knew Ted and Diane and had been up to their place. One thing that always surprised me about, I don't know if you ever got to Ted's house, was here was a guy an expert in Reichean energy from Wilhelm Reich. And I mean he was an expert in so many fields, but that was certainly one of the specialties. And right behind his house were these giant power lines, you know, that you would think the frequencies would have been enough to get him to move out, but he seemed to deal with it just fine.
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B
Well, I was at that house and I have known ted Mann since 1973, to the best of my recollection, he's been a good friend since then. In fact, I owe him a debt of gratitude because the first day I met him, I had just finished reading his book, Oregon Reich and Eros. I hopped off a Greyhound bus in Montreal, Canada, for a conference of the association for Humanistic Psychology on. I took a bus all the way from California and read his book on the bus. And there he was in Montreal when I met him. And he was so thrilled to meet a young student who had just read his whole book. He pulled out his checkbook and wrote a check for me to help me with my graduate school education.
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A
Oh, my God, what a sweet man. And by the way, that wasn't a thin book to get through. You're lucky you had a long bus ride.
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B
Well, he was a very important person in my life. He's been a guest on the original Thinking Allowed channel. We have re released one of those videos on this channel so our viewers would be. At least some of them would be familiar with Ted Mann. But your story really focuses primarily on a qigong master you met in Toronto who you refer to as Dr. Chow.
- [05:21]
A
That's right. Dr. Xu Chao. And though I never called him by his first name, it was always Dr. Chow. At one point he said, do you want to call me Sifu? And I said, no, Dr. Chow was fine. I never looked upon him as a guru or as a sifu. I looked upon him as someone who was a master of an extraordinary energy manipulation technique. And he became a friend, and I won't say a bosom buddy. But we certainly became more than just teacher and student over the years. And I first became acquainted with his existence coming back from graduate school. And there was. I was resting and I had this impulse to go and turn the TV on. Just something that doesn't happen to me very often. Either there's a show I want to watch or there isn't. But I went down and I turned on the Ripley's Believe it or not, and there was this man, young man in a white lab coat. And he was moving his arms around rapidly, and his hands were. They looked to be like the fingers were flicking something at a young woman across the room in a patient's office. And her body was shaking. And I said to myself, either this is just a fabulous hoax and I want to know more about this hoaxer, or there's something going on that I don't know about, and I want to know about that, too. So either way, I want to get in touch with this guy. And I called around Ripley's Believe it or not, was not. Was not giving me any information as to his whereabouts. So I opened up the phone book. This is pre Internet. And I called up a couple of qigong associations. No, nobody. Chinese medical associations. Nobody had heard of him. So I went to Toronto's Chinatown and I knocked on doors. Herbalist stores. No, no, no. And then finally there was an arrow pointing down into a sub basement area and there was an herbal shop there. And I walked in and this is described in my book, of course. And I said to this woman, do you know where I can get a hold of a Dr. Chow? And she looked at me and.
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B
She.
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A
Said, you patient or something like that? I need to read the book again. And I said, yes. I was thinking, this is the best answer. So she pulled up a rotary phone, made a phone call, speaking in rapid Mandarin. And the next thing I knew, I walked a block and a half, and I was standing before this old gothic mansion which had been rented out by Dr. Chow and his brothers. And I went in and I met him, but only for a few seconds. He was too busy to see me. And I had met, as you know, a psychic inside this house who, when Dr. Chow came over, said, doctor. He asked me, peter, why are you here? And I said, well, I just want to interview this Dr. Chow. He said, no, no, that's not why you're here. You're here to become his apprentice. And Dr. Chow sails into this examination room where this guy's lying down on acupuncture table with a river of silver acupuncture needles running down his tor. And he says, Dr. Chow, this is Peter. You must tell him everything you know and don't hold anything back. He's a prescient. Now, knowing Dr. Chow's limited grasp of the English language, I don't know how much he understood of any of that, but he just nodded and then left. And it wasn't until I got a. An address written on a piece of paper by his brother Alan, who also worked in this makeshift clinic, telling me where the new clinic was going to open up in a few weeks. And that's later where I connected with Dr. Chow when I came back from a trip to India and I was very sick and Western medicine was not helping me. And I thought, oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about this guy. Well, maybe I'll go pay him a visit.
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B
So if I recall correctly, the psychic you met also seemed to have foreknowledge of your trip to India, and the fact that you would be detained while you were there.
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A
This is absolutely true. And Dr. Chow said, Jerry, the name of the psychic, was one of the very best he'd met in North America. And he said, you're going to travel far away. And before you get together with Dr. Chow again, I'm not sure if he added that part, but he said, you're going to end up in jail for a while. And I was going to visit a friend of mine, Brant Secunda, who was a guy who apprenticed with Adanu Zeimatsu, a Huichil shaman. And he was visiting some people in. We had become pals, and he was visiting some people in South India. But I didn't have the right visa, and so I was unable to leave the airport in Mumbai. And it's a long story, but I ended up staying there, which felt like a jail because I was really restricted to my movements. They fed me in this small little room, and the only way I finally got out of it, because I was waiting for a visa to be delivered. It never was. And actually, as I got on a plane to Sri Lanka to get a visa to get back to India, a guy is running out to the plane saying, I've got your visa. It was too late.
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B
It's quite uncanny that your first encounter with Dr. Chow involves this amazingly unusual and accurate psychic prognostication. It seemed to set the tone for much of what came later.
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A
Yeah, that's very good insight, and that's true, because what came later was just filled with synchronicities of every kind imaginable. And, you know, synchronicity is one of those great words which. It may mean meaningful coincidence, as Jung interpreted or coined. Coined after he coined the phrase. But what is underneath these synchronicities? That's, you know, it's. It's a good catch all. But what's really going on? Sometimes, you know, and it's just in the field of the paranormal and you and those. There's your explanation, and sometimes you don't know, and it's just. It's just one of the mysteries we have to live with. You know, I think of your life and the extraordinary number of synchronicities that led you to where you are today as this host. I mean, you're the only guy doing what you're doing on the level on which you're doing it. And that had to be, in some ways, a guided path is my feeling.
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B
I definitely feel I've been guided. I think there's no question. And it would Seem as if the same implication would hold for your relationship with Dr. Chow. It's interesting that when you first became his patient, you were quite ill, and not only from your trip to India, but you'd also had, I presume, a longstanding condition of asthma that he cured.
- [13:17]
A
Entirely true. And I'd had it from, I think I developed Asthma at about 6 months of age. And, you know, I was on various inhalers and a lot of medication. And asthma is not something that you cure overnight. And he certainly didn't cure it overnight, but he did over probably a period of two to three months with acupuncture and herbs. And then he said, you know, if you want to be asthma free, you got to do qigong. And, oh, my God, I'd forgotten about Qi Kong. So that began the apprenticeship, I would say, unwittingly on my part. I didn't think of myself as an apprentice. I'd forgotten Jerry's prediction. I thought, well, let's just see what this is all about. I mean, you know, he's done a fabulous job healing me thus far, and, you know, let's try out the qigong, but on the note of being guided. You know, his new clinic was only, oh, 12 minute walk from where I lived. And he said he originally was going to buy a house three doors down from where I lived, but ended up with this other clinic. And then he said he was not a determinist in the sense that he felt that life was predetermined. But he said there are some things that appear to be predetermined, and there's a Chinese word for that. And he thought that this particular encounter, that the two of that it had been. It was faded. But more than that, he never said he wasn't trying to rope me into any, any. Well, maybe he was, but he didn't. He was. He was parsimonious with his words, let me put it that way. I mean, that book, as thin as it is, was like pulling teeth to get him to talk about anything. And he never spoke about his own abilities, as these people tend to not do.
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B
Well, you were first attracted to him because he appeared on Ripley's Believe it or Not TV show, flicking his fingers like that, and apparently having a palpable effect on another human being some distance away.
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A
Well, that's absolutely right. And, you know, it took me probably about, I don't know, maybe a year or two after I started becoming his patient and becoming a student of qigong, that I actually saw him demonstrate exactly the same thing. And it was on his sister. And he just, I mean, Dr. Chow had a great sense of humor and he, I would say an impish sense of humor. He was a big jokester and a big prankster and he just loved to make people laugh and he just thought it was hilarious that when he threw chi at his sister, she performed like a little wind up toy. She had her eyes shut and she would, you know, he had to catch her so she wouldn't bump into things. It's just the way some people react to Qi. It stimulates their nerves in a way. And you want to let the Qi guide your steps. In other words, if you feel like moving, you want to move because that's what the Qi is wanting to do and that's how it's moving through your meridians. And so the natural thing is to do that. And that is a reaction that some people have.
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B
Well, to be clear, in your memoir, you describe seven years of working with Dr. Chow apprentice, and he even went so far as to say that, if I recall correctly, back in China, he met a psychic who told him that he was going to have a Western apprentice.
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A
He did, you know, he didn't say that right at the beginning. And so he just mentioned that when I was well into it and the psychic was blind and said that Dr. Chow would be going to another country in the north and having this one Western apprentice. But of course, I never knew if it was me or not. I think he said the name Peter, but now I can't recall. But he thought the psychic was extraordinary because no one was leaving China in the late 70s, even early 80s, you just couldn't get out, but he did. So, yeah, it did seem like there was maybe some, some faded aspect to it.
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B
In fact, I recall now a conversation in which you said to him the fact that you saw him on the Ripley's Believe it or Not TV show, and if you hadn't seen it, you might not have reached him. And he said it wouldn't have mattered whether you had watched it or not. It was faded that you were going to be his apprentice.
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A
I'm glad you remembered that. I'd forgotten that. Yeah, that is true. It seemed that way. And, you know, he was a doctor, he made his living, you know, giving people acupuncture, giving them herbs. He was a fabulous herbalist and, and a very, very gifted acupuncturist. He, he was. And he was always going to conferences and learning new techniques, but when it came to qigong, he charged for. He charged you. I forget how much it was but for a course of 36 sessions, three times a week over a period of three months. And I took that course a couple of times, and then I figured, I've got it, I got enough. I don't need this anymore. My brother, who was more gifted than I was, it was a natural, but had to cut short his training because he was co producing a series called Millennium Tribal Wisdom in the Modern World. It was a big, big PBS series and he was traveling around the world, so he had to cut short his training. And then he came home one day from the clinic. He said, Dr. Chow wants to see. And I said, well, you know, tell him I'm fine, I don't need to go back. No, no, no. He really thinks you should drop in. So I went back and. And the apprenticeship commenced again. And he never charged me after that. And I saw him every day until I left for la, but it continued while I was in la, and then I would see him whenever I was back in Toronto, which could be four months at a time working on different projects. And it was an apprenticeship that continued up until the day he died, which was in 2017.
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B
Well, one of the intriguing things to me is this business of throwing or flicking the QI energy. And I gather that you also experienced this many times.
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A
You know, Jeff, when I read, you know, accounts of mainstream materialist scientists who first of all deny the existence of Qi, you know, which. Which is also denying, I, I guess the efficacy of. I guess they would say acupuncture works on the placebo effect, if it works at all. Right.
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B
Or it has something to do with endorphins.
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A
Dr. Chow was, in his heart, a scientist, and he didn't want people to believe in anything, which is astounding when you consider sort of the field he was in. So each. Each session he would come in and he would stand at the door of the clinic. You would have to shut your eyes again. Maybe this is. He didn't want suggestibility to be part of what you were, you know, going to take in. And all I would hear was the rustle of his sleeves. It would last for maybe 15 or 20 seconds at the most, and then he would leave the room. So he never came close to your body. And I'm speaking, I'm saying your or one's body, because he did this to many patients. I may have trained further with him, but there were many, many students. And this is including my mother, including my brother, including many of my friends who I recommended to him. And so, on a very basic level, every Single person felt the throwing of chi at every single session you had. So this was like kindergarten stuff. But again, stuff that would be considered inadmissible, not, not possible, you know. No, no, no journal would, you know, I, I think of, you know, the, the, the, the guys at, at PEAR in Princeton, you know, spent years of their lives demonstrating beyond any randomness that people could possess PK abilities. And then I remember reading at the front page of the New York Times and USA Today, the lab shuts down, not because of funding, but because Nature and science refused to have any of the results peer reviewed. And we wouldn't look at their results. So they had to publish a parapsychology review or something. And they just said, what's the point of doing this if we won't even. We welcome criticism. We'd like to know what people think we would do better. But of course, their experiments were conducted at the highest level. I digress. My point being that many, many people experienced what I experienced and along with me were told, do not read any books, don't talk to anyone about it. We want you to have as pure an experience as possible and see where the Qi moves in your body. Now, with the vast majority of the students who took these courses, the chi moved in a very similar way. Which is. It described the traditional path of Kundalini, or as is written in flowery metaphoric language, the Secret of the Golden Flower. That is what the Secret of the Golden Flower is teaching you. And Jung, who is this extraordinary figure of 20th century psychology, I guess, more influential than Freud for the latter part of the century, got two things wrong. I should say he didn't get them wrong and it's not his fault because the translation of the Secret of the Golden Flower was obscured by, by the language and Wilhelm was not able to, to really figure it out. And he, he couldn't translate words like chi and, and Clary came by later and was able to do a much better job. But the turning inward of the light, which is what they both correctly transcribed Jung thought was a turning inwards of you're going into the unconscious and you're bringing that more conscious. And so in a sense, he was right psychologically, but he couldn't believe for a second there was a physical, let's say a physical spiritual movement in the body, a primitive energy pathways. Just because who knew about that stuff? I mean, there was a book that came out by Sir Arthur Avalon, AKA Sir John Wood, was it Woodruff?
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B
Yes.
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A
A member of the Theosophical society, you know, 1909. But no one read that book unless they were a theosophy, you know, the Theosophical Society. But other than that we didn't get it wasn't until I think Gopi Krishna started writing about his experiences in maybe it was, was it 1970. He had a couple of books. Yeah, he actually started talking about the physicality of it. But still it's held in doubt by many, many people who even practice meditation because they haven't experienced it. And I understand that. I never say, I'm the first person to say, don't believe something because someone says it because that person could be delusional. They could have their own motivations for saying it to you. Check it out yourself, experience it yourself if you can otherwise hold it somewhere in your consciousness, like maybe, but I don't know, because how else can you live your life?
- [26:46]
B
Well, you had many of these experiences and so did well known sociologist Ted Mann, to whom we referred at the beginning of our interview.
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A
Ted man was both a patient and a qigong student. And I, which, which means there's a record of his, of his sessions with Dr. Chow. And I wonder where we might get that, where I might find that. But so yeah, he was, he was very much. Ted was always on the forefront of anything to do with, with energy. And so he, I don't know how he sought out Dr. Chow, but he was there. And you know, those twinkling eyes and his elfin features were just. Whenever you saw him, you just couldn't help but smile. He's just a lovely, lovely man. And Dr. Chow and I went to visit Ted and his wife Diane at Ted's house. Ted just wanted to have a bunch of people over that were interested in the body's energy. And so we all went over there and we had a great time. After the party is when we had a Ted Owens PK man experience because it was raining outside, it was pouring. And I driven my old sports car, which didn't have a top to it, or rather it had a top that didn't work. And so Ted, ever the chivalrous man that he was, you know, just materialized two umbrellas and we were going to drive that way. And then Dr. Chao said, not necessary. Not necessary. Like that. And by the. So that was Ted giving us the umbrellas, Dr. Chow saying, not necessary. By the time we walked out the door, the rain had stopped. And you have to understand, Dr. Chow never said or would say, you know, look what I did, or, you know, just would never take credit for anything. And you had to you had to approach him in a way that indicated you knew something had gone on. And by the way, if he wasn't responsible, he would tell you right away. Not me. But in this case, I said, how did you do that, Dr. Chow? I said, did you do that with spirits? Because that is one technique that certain shamans use. And he said, no, not this way. And I said, how difficult is it? Again, I never asked him, did you stop the rain? I would never say that. That's just not the way our relationship worked. I never put him on the spot, but I just wanted him to tell me what he wanted to tell me. That was it. And I said, how difficult is it to do this, to stop the rain, from a Qigong perspective? And he said, this most difficult. More difficult than affect students, than affect animal, than affect plant? He said this most difficult. But then he said, and I don't know if this is in the book, he said, sky will be clear for Peter family barbecue tonight. No problem. So it was a true Ted Owens moment.
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B
Well, in the course of your apprenticeship with him, you learned a great deal about the meridians and the various acupuncture points and the way that the Qi energy would move across through your body according to this system. And it seemed, I gather from your book, that it followed very precisely the meridian system.
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A
There are the meridians and then there are these extraordinary channels. And the most important in terms of completing the circuit of energy, is the channel that runs up your back, crosses over your scalp and then runs down the front of the middle of your torso. And what's extraordinary is it's a primitive electrical system. It is our natural inheritance and we have completely forgotten it, or if we ever had, was deliberately hidden. I'm intrigued by looking at statues from prehistory, Gobleki Tepe, for instance. If you look at some of those statues, I showed some photographs to Dr. Chow, I said, what do you make of this? And there on one of these 200 ton statues, you see what looks like a humanoid character with the hands clasped around the belly as if to communicate to future civilizations, if you do this, you can generate energy. This, I mean, it was important enough for whoever carved that to have that figure clasping their hands over the main furnace of Qi energy, which is below your abdomen. It's called the Dantin. When you could have carved that statue in any number of ways. Below that were children to what I'm looking at. And I said, Dr. Chow, what do you think? He said, oh, this show you that strong? I don't think he used the word virility. I don't think he knew that word. But strong chi can have many children, something like that. Now, of course, there's no written record. It could just be an indication of contentment or that it had a full belly. This is a wild surmise. But it is interesting that in the east we do have an Easter island, the Moai. You dig below those huge faces and where are their hands? Again, no written record to indicate that this is why they did it. But isn't it interesting that these statues, for me, are showing the hands in what is a standard qigong standing position? And if you do that 30 minutes a day, you will feel energy. You don't have to believe in it. There's nothing to subscribe to. It doesn't matter what your religion is, you will simply feel energy. There's. Now, where that energy goes is another story, but you'll feel the energy.
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B
Well, you in particular seem to have a heightened sensitivity for Qi energy. As I spoke to you or communicated with you earlier, I studied qigong with a supposed qigong master, and it was helpful. I enjoyed it. I also studied Tai Chi, but I never had the sensations of energy moving along particular channels in my body the way you described virtually from the beginning of your work with Dr. Chow.
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A
But I'm not the only one, and I think that's the important thing, because I think the majority of his students were able to get what they would describe as the microcosmic orbit, meaning the first primitive circuit, and it would be joined. What was interesting was there were a few students, let's say three or four, where the energy went up the other way, and no one knows why, as Dr. Chat would say. He said he didn't know why that happened, but it happened and it was real.
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B
I mean, up the front and down the back, as opposed to up the back and down the front, which is.
- [35:09]
A
The way it's normally described and portrayed. But these went the reverse way. And I've read in some yogic manuals, tantric manuals, that reverse thing, and I always thought they got it wrong, but in fact, some people do do that naturally. So I'm quite convinced, Jeff, that if you had studied with Dr. Chow, you would have immediately picked it up, because I do think with all of the psychic experiences you've had, it would have been a no brainer for you.
- [35:44]
B
I don't know, I can be pretty dense at times. But in any case, this training that you went through lasted not only the seven years that you wrote about in your book. But many more years, another decade at least after that, when you communicated with Dr. Chow, mostly from a distance because you were in LA.
- [36:09]
A
I guess this is going to sound crazy, but, God, it was. It was a routine thing with him. Once you had your. Once someone has their chakras open, or which. Which is the case if you develop the first circuit of energy, then energy transmission and energy receiving are no big deal. And that includes telepathy. It includes the receiving or throwing of energy, as I just said, and many other things, dreams and so on. So a lot of the apprenticeship continued originally by phone, and then the phone just wasn't necessary anymore. But, you know, every time there, I felt I was getting a message from him. I always. I was always suspicious. Am I imagining this? Is this real? I would write down the time. Let's just say in the early days, in the 80s, late 80s, I sail into his clinic and I'd say, what time did you throw chi to me today? And he would tell me, and then I would tell him. I mean, I think I wrote it down on a piece of paper once, but I had to know that I was not schizophrenic. And the thing about. So we're talking energy, but we're talking something more than energy. You know, we're talking about resonance, which is a word that we use in everyday speech. And psychologists use it one way, sociologists another way. And I'm. I would like to expand the definition of resonance because I think when there is resonance, true resonance, then it's much easier to share energy and thoughts and hypnosis. I'm jumping around here a bit, Jeff, so excuse me, but I'm just thinking right now of some telepathy situations I had with Dr. Chow. But I want to go to one of your favorite people, which is Frederick Myers back in the day, because there were hypnosis. Because this, I think.
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B
Telepathic hypnosis.
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A
Telepathic induction. Yeah. But here's the important point. For me, there was no telepathic induction done with people they didn't know. It was always with people they had worked with before. It was always with people they had resonance with. Not to say it couldn't be done the other way, but it'd be much, much more difficult. And I don't think people had the ability. Resonance on this level of energy sharing, I think, is a type of entanglement. And I don't think. You're not throwing energy, you're not throwing your thoughts. It's not classical physics. It's a quantum thing. You Know this person's energy signature, let's put it that way. And if you are have a strong enough focus, you're able to send a message. And the more the sender and the more the receiver have a high energy level, the easier it is to do.
- [40:18]
B
Well, I was going to suggest that you talk about the big test. It was a theme that ran throughout your book and I'm pretty sure it illustrates exactly what you're describing right here.
- [40:31]
A
Yeah, I will. So this is this crazy thing. I don't know how serious he was, but, you know, it scared me to death. If I wasn't going to. If I didn't pass the big test, no more training, apprenticeship over. And so what's the big test about? Part of the big test is figuring out what the big test is. I mean, there's, you know, impossible, you know, Chinese, you know, puzzle box, you know, so like, give me a break. So I was always asking, there was a prodigy, Joseph, if he knew anything about it. And he didn't actually. Just found a letter Joseph wrote me the other day, which was quite, quite instructive because Joseph was much more far advanced than I was until he left for LA to become a lawyer. Anyway, the big test was all about the receiving of energy over distances and involving telepathy. The first time I had a. What I knew was a. Well, I didn't know it was a telepathic exchange. I was in the reference library, Metropolitan Toronto Reference Library, researching a subject for something I was writing. And I had this voice come into my head. Peter, come to clinic early. And I. I'd never had something like that in my life, you know, and you think of people who hear voices and what that means. So I ignored it and it became stronger and stronger and stronger. So I said, well, just as a lark, I'll show up. You never know, right? So I. This is how this is really. This is these. This was in the early days and this, this was the tenor of the relationship. I just waltzed into the clinic at 4:30 instead of 6:30, which was my usual time. And I said, so here I am, Dr. Chow. I came early. Peter go to room. Clinic close early. So that was it. I never said, hey, Dr. Chow, did you send me? We never had those discussions. I was always testing him and he was always testing me. And I wasn't the best student for a while, that's for sure, but I gradually became better. So the big test participated in this kind of thing. And it finally resulted in him. He was in China and he threw chi And I had a dream that he's going to throw it at 1:30. But I didn't know if it was in the morning, if it was in the afternoon. I think I knew the day, but I didn't know. And so, as I recall at this.
- [43:38]
B
Point, as I understand your story, he had already established that he could communicate with you through dreams he had.
- [43:47]
A
And I'll tell you, I'm going to tell you a dream right now. He said, peter, remember your dream last night? And I said, no, I didn't. He said, I stopped visiting Peter in dream if he no remember dream. I said, oh, okay, you must remember dream, or I no visit anymore. Part of me wondered in those previous visits that I didn't remember. Is it encoded somewhere? Is it information I can retrieve? You know, I didn't know. Well, the dream that is in that I put in the book, just not complimentary to me, but it's something I remembered. It was probably happened shortly after the lecture was I saw a list of my qualities and defects as a qigong student. And I think as a human being. And you know, I would like to think the pluses outweighed the minuses, but it was, and I don't disagree with anything that was said, but, you know, it's, it's sobering to have someone tell you the facts of, of your, of your personality and who you are and then for you to recognize them. But, you know, that was. I was also in my 20s. I think I've grown up since then.
- [45:05]
B
But that's a very powerful dream.
- [45:08]
A
Oh, my God. It knocked me off my feet. Yeah. And you know, when I mentioned it later in the clinic, Dr. Chow. Yep. Don't doubt it. That's why I was there.
- [45:21]
B
So at that point, he had established that the apprenticeship you were engaged in was both in his clinic and in your dreams.
- [45:33]
A
When you realize that it could be anyone, it can be a friend, a lover, a teacher has access to. Your dreams can send you telepathic messages, can understand to some extent what you're thinking. It's. And you test it over and over again to see if it's real and you're not imagining it. And you find out over and over again. No, no, this is it. You know, I wish philosophy would, would investigate this. And I mean philosophy and well, I guess psychology as well, this field, because, yes, it's part of, you know, we're all one. But I mean, if criminals only realized that everything they do can be read by a great psychic detective, that there truly is no privacy or you may have privacy, but at some point, that privacy might disappear. If someone is interested in your behavior from a psychic point of view, I mean, it can radically shift how you. How your behavior and how you view your life in terms of you seeing interconnectedness and how you conduct yourself as a human being. You know, that would be, as I say, a continental philosopher, not a. Not a British analytical philosopher.
- [47:01]
B
So the big test came where you received a message in a dream that at a certain time, at 1:30, Dr. Chow, who was then in China, was going to send you qi energy.
- [47:18]
A
Didn't tell me what day and didn't tell me what time. So, you know, you're on high alert. One is on high alert when. When you and you. When you're told. This is a very important test. And I wasn't sure how, if he would stop teaching. But anyway, I knew I had to. I knew I had to get it. And I did get it. I got it a few minutes, I think I got at 123 and immediately wrote it down. And then I. I got it, I think three more times. I. And I. So. And then I got it. I got it more times after the 130. So, I mean, he was absolutely making sure that if I was sensitive enough, there was no way I would miss this. And so he came back, and I'm trying to think now. I don't know if it's in the book. Who told who first what the time was? I think I must have told him. And then he said, yes, I sent it to you early to make sure you got it. But you see, when you get a bolt of chi, it doesn't just stay someplace. It immediately filters to. It's like gene therapy. I mean, it goes to where it needs to go, you know, to whatever meridian needs to be topped off, so to speak.
- [48:47]
B
It has a mind of its own own.
- [48:49]
A
It truly does. It has its own intelligence. And that's why you don't want to try and control chi. That's why you don't want to force chi. You want to let chi go where it wants to go. And, you know, I want to say something in general about qigong in my book, which is that it is not necessary to have any of these experiences I had and to get these circles of energy to be happy or to be healthy or to be creative. And it is certainly not a path to enlightenment or illumination. And I feel that it's being pursued with that in mind. And the people that pursue qigong for reasons other than health, for the acquisition of Paranormal powers, they, they frequently strengthen the ego. It ends up producing the opposite kind of person that you would expect. So, you know, there have been tremendous, huge number of great healers that have never talked about the chi moving in circuits throughout their body. There being creative geniuses that have never talked about chi and they're certainly being very wise people who've never talked about energy. So it's, I want to say it's separate and apart from any of that. It is part of the body's electrical system. It is very valuable to know about it. It can lead to better health and it can actually help your brain. But it's not, you know, I mean, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, you know, they didn't talk about cheese circles. You don't need it. It's, it's, it's not necessary. It's like you and, and there's a spiritual stench that you find with practitioners of the healing arts, including yoga and qigong. And I go to yoga three times a week. I go five times a week and sometimes I go seven. You know, I mean, it's, and then it's, it's a one upmanship and it all becomes this huge, massive ego enhancement and it just, it defeats everything. And you've lost the plot at that point.
- [51:10]
B
Well, you continued your apprenticeship with Dr. Chi after you passed the big test. What was that phase like?
- [51:19]
A
And he visited me a number of times in la. He had conferences, he was a highly sought after speaker. And there were some big qigong conferences in LA with just, just Chinese participants. And so we'd always get together and, you know, you learn it, you learn something new every time you're with someone like this. But one of the things that's not in the book, because it happened after the book came out was he was in LA and I was driving him back to the airport and he said, peter, Peter, go to Peter House. And I said, oh, okay. It was on the way to the airport. So I parked and I said, let me, you know, let me go up with you. I'll open the door. No, no, Peter, give me key. I'll go, I go myself. So I didn't know what on earth he was up to. I thought, okay, maybe he needs to use the bathroom or something like that. Well, he was gone about 10 minutes. Gets in the car, I drive him to the airport. Off he goes. The next morning I call him up, Dr. Chow, what did you do to the living room? Oh, Peter notice this good Peter notice. I said, yeah, but what did you do? Oh, there's no this. This. No problem. I throw cheat in the walls. He said. I said, what? Yeah, I put in the walls for Peter. And I said, wow. I said, how long does. Oh, this lasts a long time. And I said, what would diminish it? You know, like, if I paint the walls. Oh, yeah. No, if. Paint the walls. Chico down. Yeah, chico down. So if I can tell you a quick anecdote that relates to that. But I loved it. And, you know, people used to come in and go, my God, the energy is great in here. And I go, well, I know why.
- [53:31]
B
You had the same feeling in his office.
- [53:35]
A
Oh, my God, it was saturated with qi. Saturated. And he would. He didn't let you sit around very long. You know, he would take your pulses and go to room, you know, like that, for either an acupuncture session or a qigong session, whichever one you were doing. Because his energy field was so clean that hanging around people, he. He would pick up your energy, and he would always have to go to. He had a. A bathroom in his office, and he'd have to go, and he'd always clear his throat. And I used to think, is my energy that. That bad? But that's what he did. So this is just a quick story which relates to the idea, and you may want to cut this out or not. I don't know. But I guess about 12 years ago. It's about 12 years ago, I went to the Krishnamurti foundation in Ojai, and I brought along my friend Jennifer and her daughter Lily Rose, and Michael Cronin, who was Krishnamurti's chef and wrote a wonderful book about recipes that he cooked up for Krishnamurti, said, oh, you should. You should go down and. And visit Krishnamurti's bedroom. I think you might find it interesting. So the three of us traipsed down the hallway. He could see where we were from the bookstore. He could see us go down the hallway, and we went into this room, and I didn't feel anything. I mean, I'll be honest. I came back and I said, I didn't feel anything. He said, oh, no, no, no. I saw you go down. You went in the wrong room. You go down and you turn to the right. So we went down into that room, and Krishnamurti died in 86. So this was a long time after. But the energy field was something I'd never felt before. It was extremely dense, and it was very fine, and it was absolutely beautiful. And both my friend Jennifer and Lily Rose felt it right in her sternum, in the Solar plexus, which is a major Qi Kung point. And we came out and we went up and he said, michael, pretty extraordinary, right? He said, German speaking. And I said, yes, Well, I went back a few years ago and they painted the room gone. I mean, a little bit, it's gone. So this has to do with putting energy into objects, into rooms. And I'm sure you've met people along the way that have little talismans that they charged up and so on and so forth. But it's the same principle.
- [56:49]
B
Well, I know you've had a number of conversations with Dr. Chow in which you ask him, you know, how is it possible that you can keep throwing your energy and yet you still have lots of it?
- [57:01]
D
Well.
- [57:04]
A
He was extraordinarily gifted. I mean, I've read a lot of accounts of modern day qigong masters and qigong masters of old, and I've never come across anyone who could do what he did. I'm sure there were people, and maybe they were just people that never came into the public. And he himself would never have become a public individual if he wasn't a healer. He didn't. He didn't advertise that aspect at all. In fact, I think his approach to the book was okay, but I don't think he liked the fact that I was touting his. His paranormal powers didn't end.
- [57:42]
B
He was willing to appear on the Ripley TV show.
- [57:45]
A
Yeah, but I got into some other things that a little bit. A little bit of a higher level, let's say. But yes, you're right. So, I mean, and he continued to teach me, but I mean, I did say, what did you think of the book? He said, that's okay. Yeah, it's all right. That's all I got.
- [58:01]
B
Well, I thought your book was an extraordinary book, especially when you compare it, for example, to the tales of Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda. And the genre of people writing about their experiences with a guru or a shaman or a teacher of one kind or another. So many of those books are fictionalized, and I'm under the impression that yours is a straightforward nonfiction account of events that are truly remarkable.
- [58:36]
A
Well, there are a number of other people who can testify to similar kinds of experiences with Dr. Chao. So I'm not the only one. You know, it's not just me. There are other people who can vouch for. For experiences of a similar nature. There were a number of experiences that I did have that cannot be scientifically verified, and you just have to. And I would never expect anyone to believe them, but if they happen, then I don't push them aside. I just accept them.
- [59:10]
B
Well, Peter Meech, this has been a fabulous conversation. I'm so glad that you reached out to me. I'm so glad we connected, and I'm thrilled to be able to share your story with the New Thinking Allowed audience.
- [59:24]
A
Thanks Jeff. It's been a thrill talking to you, having watched New Thinking Allowed for as many episodes as I have, and I just thank you so much for inviting me.
- [59:34]
B
It's been a joy. And for those of you watching or listening, thank you for being with us also, because you are the reason that we are here.
- [60:09]
C
Book four in the New Thinking Allowed dialogue series is Charles T. Tart 70 years of exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology, now available on Amazon.
- [60:23]
D
New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body and spirit, the topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website@cihs.edu. you can now download all eight copies of the New Thinking Allowed magazine for free or order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org.