Pathgate Journal

The Ultimate Aim of Classical Qigong

Emmanuel Hammon is a native of France. After attaining one HND in Business Administration and another one in Electronic Engineering from the Universite de Cergy-Potoise (France), he went on to work for Ericsson (Sweden), Renault (France) and Rolls Royce (England) before gaining a BA(Hon) in Business Administration and a Postgraduate Diploma/MA in Marketing at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle.

Does Life have an Ultimate Aim?

"I have for the best part of my life been motivated by the urge of short term purposes. Instead of attaining happiness, I encountered time and again disenchantment and disappointment as if I had been chasing a mirage of no consequence.

I used to think that happiness would come if I could have control over my environment. The energy I spent in trying to attain control created more and more stress, which made everyday life increasingly difficult. Just like being on stage in a theatrical performance, I felt I had to wear different masks of artificial attitudes which caused me to compromise myself endlessly. The harder I tried the more I suffered. By focusing my life on mundane pursuits such as grasping for praise, power, and trying to appease my obsessive arrogance, I found myself chasing after illusions of my own making.

Subsequently, I became low in energy and easily tired. I suffered from mood swings and eventually became taciturn. My everyday life consisted of the same routines and ritual. Even when I chanced upon a brief moment of joy, it would be swiftly overtaken by a state of melancholy. I couldn’t understand why I was unhappy, and came to accept that if darkness was to be my guide in life, so be it.

In November 1996, I was guided towards a new path by Sifu Yeung. My first Qigong session with Sifu was a revelation. In the person of Sifu, I saw the ultimate aim of Qigong. Each of his actions is incarnated by compassion and mindfulness. I understood then that one cannot attain one’s true nature and happiness without first dissolving the barriers of the ordinary mind and reaching a state of egolessness, the deliverance of all conditionings. As Sifu lives by the principles he is teaching, it is very easy for him to demonstrate them and put them into practise.

Sifu does not teach religion or rituals, but what he teaches are proven principles which are substantiated by the doctrine of lineage spiritual teachings. By all accounts, Sifu's teachings are in fact a very practical philosophy orientated towards the comprehension and cultivation of a higher state of clarity within the mind, leading to actions that create a win/win situations.

The Ultimate Aim Of Qigong

I discovered the study of Qigong is about understanding the nature of the ultimate reality, and the dynamics of how we interact with events and living things around us. I recognised that energy is everywhere and that the reality I understood then, just the same as the reality that I perceive now is just subjective reality based on the things that my own perception allows me to see. I have come to realise that the more I know the less I know. As the boundaries of the mind expand, so does the reality that I perceived.

Everything is in essence frequency. I have realised that there are similarities between electronics and the mind. In electronics, some filters are designed to accept only a certain band of frequency and reject all others. Similarly, when confined to a certain frequency, the mind perceives the reality in a certain way, if the frequency changes, the reality we experience changes. Similarly, what in electronics is called noise, when applied to the mind itself, is created by the emergence of all our desires and attitudes.

A few months ago, my world views were shaken once again when I started to be able to distinguish the auras of people. It first started by brief appearances of blue colour around people's limbs. Later on, I could actually observe a full envelope of consistent blue light. After repeated experiences of the same type, I could not deny anymore what I was seeing and came to realise that the physical body that we have is only the grossest part of our body.

Subsequently, I was able to perceive the energy connections between people, animals and other things. On a spiritual level, what I was able to perceive is that we are all interdependent on each other’s energy, and that there is no such thing as inherent independence. I realised that by pretending to be independent, people are in fact working against their own nature, and what is essential in relation to the objective of human existence.

My new ability to observe energy patterns also helped me to understand more fully the nature of some internal arts applications used by Sifu, and further qualify the authenticity of qi as a credible energy form. For example, when issuing an energy discharge on a student, instead of merely seeing the student bouncing away, I could actually see a bright flash of blue light emanating from the hand of Sifu. By understanding that energy is everywhere, and that what appears to be solid reality is in fact just illusion, it is easier to understand phenomena around Sifu's work.

My objective for becoming a student of the Classical Qigong Study Course was to create a new order in my life and to re-discover the part of me which I had forgotten. Since I have known Sifu, things have gradually started to change in my life. By Sifu pointing out things to me and gaining a practical understanding of the action, effects, and results of certain things I was practising before, it was easier for me to give them up and take a new path of action. For example, in terms of energy I realised why kindness is better than anger. I have come to realise now that life can be as easy or as hard as we make it.

I have now a much more satisfying life. I see things differently and experience life with a more consistent state of happiness and try to act on it with a view of long-term purpose. But all this would have been impossible without the guidance of primordial wisdom I received from Sifu."