How to Become Immortal According to Daoism (in 5 not-so-easy steps)

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]The year was 1222. The great conqueror Teuin, the universal king, better known as Genghask Khan, was camped in modern-day Afghanistan. He was awaiting a very special visitor, the Dowist Master Chonguin. He was ushered before the Khan who started asking a few pointed questions. Are you immortal as people claim? How have you cheated death? Do you possess the elixir of immortality? And most importantly, how could I, Genghask Khan, live forever?

[00:00:29]Now, as it turns out, Master Chongqen, whose name literally means eternal spring, had no such elixir. Nor did he claim to be immortal. But he did claim the rest of his fellow disciples had become transcendence and suggested some ways that the Khan himself could extend his life and escape the bounds of mortality. Not a shortcut to immortality like drinking an elixir, but a long process of transformation, becoming a transcendent. So, let's talk about what it means to become a Dowist transcended and how, according to Dowist traditions, how you might live forever in just five not so easy steps. Immortality is not guaranteed. You should always consult your doctor and local Dowist priests before starting any diet and exercise program. All right. First, we need to define transcendent or Shien in Chinese.

[00:01:13]In Dowism, transcendents are supernatural beings who can traverse the heavens, move between earthly and celestial realms, and have lifespans far longer than humans. They have superhuman abilities like flying or teleporting.

[00:01:27]One transcendent was famous for shapeshifting into, among other things, a talking sheep. They don't need food or water. They don't feel hot or cold. The term Shien is often translated as immortal, but that can be misleading.

[00:01:39]These figures are beings who escaped ordinary death, not necessarily ones who exist forever in an absolute sense. The scholar Robert Campany points out that students of Western religions tend to think in binaries when it comes to this topic. Death versus immortality, time versus eternity, natural versus supernatural. But in Dowoism and Chinese religions in general, it makes more sense to speak in gradations, hierarchical continuities or chains of being. To quote Dr. company. What he means is instead of a sharp line between human and divine or mortal and immortal, Dowist thought imagines a spectrum and beings can move up or down along the spectrum becoming more or less refined, more or less longived, more or less transcendent. Translating Shien as transcendent captures this idea because Dowist traditions don't imagine transcendence as escaping time altogether or entering some static eternal realm. They're still part of the same everchanging cosmos, just operating on a different higher level. They've moved up, not out. In fact, Dowist texts sometimes distinguish between people who have simply managed not to die and those who have actually become transcendent.

[00:02:50]That's a subtle but important difference. You're not just trying to avoid death. You're trying to transform into an entirely different kind of being. The ancient Chinese scholar Gahong wrote extensively on transcendence and he describes three different levels. There were tien celestial immortals who live among the gods. Then there are earthly transcendants or dishian who he describes as middle level practitioners who wander among noted mountains. Then there are those who obtain transcendence through something called corpse release or shia. Basically where a practitioner appears to die but in reality they've shed their physical body and continue on in a more refined form. From the outside it can look a bit like faking your own death. And you could technically translate Sheria as escaped by means of a simulated corpse. But in Dowist thought, it's really more like leaving behind an old shell. The common metaphor is that of a cicada. The shell left behind looks like a cicada, but it's empty. The actual creature has moved on, moving on to a different part of the life cycle. Early descriptions imagine transcendence literally ascending into the sky. And early representations depict them as beings with wings walking on clouds. In the Dwangsa, one of the foundational Dowist texts, there's a passage that says, "After a thousand years of life, he grows weary of the world. He departs and rises up and riding on a white cloud, he reaches the realm of the celestial emperor." Now, becoming a transcendent has long been considered a key feature of Daoism. But if you go back to the earliest Dowist texts like the Daaja Jing or the Dangsu, the term Shien barely appears at all.

[00:04:23]Now, the concept of transformation is still absolutely key, especially in the drunks. But these texts talk more about other kinds of ideal people, like the gen, the perfected person, or the Shenrren, the sage. These figures aren't always described as physically immortal.

[00:04:38]In fact, many passages suggest that the goal is not to escape death, but to live in such a way that you're no longer anxious about death, to align yourself so fully with the Dao that death simply is not a problem anymore. Another foundational text, the Leetsettza, even seems to imply that death itself is final. No way to transcend it. Dead means dead. At the same time, though, other passages hint at something more.

[00:05:00]The Dangsa describes beings who are invulnerable, who ride on dragons, who move effortlessly beyond worlds. And later Dowist texts start to lean much more heavily into that imagery. And especially in the early centuries of the common era, the idea emerges that you can become a Shien. You can train for it. You can cultivate it. You can in principle transform yourself into one of these beings. As Gahong puts it, one's fate is in one's own hands, not in heaven. So then, how can you become a Shien in five not so easy steps? First, go low carb. Step one on the path to transcendence is to cut out all grains from your diet. This practice is known as bigu, literally avoiding grains.

[00:05:44]Ancient Chinese texts mention the so-called five grains, which depending on the list includes wheat, millet, soybeans, and hemp. But basically, when Dowists say avoid grains, they don't really just mean cutting out carbs. They mean stepping away from the entire diet and lifestyle of ordinary human society.

[00:05:59]The scholar Robert Camp argues that originally rejecting grains was seen as a rejection of civilization itself, a way of drawing a line between the ordinary person and the aesthetic hermit. As Campony points out, in ancient China, being civilized meant doing things like eating grains, cooking your food, and wearing hemp and silk.

[00:06:16]The logic goes that grains feed the three worms. Demons who live in your body that are always trying to tattle on you to the director of fate and get your lifespan cut short, though the connection between grains and the three worms seems to have been a relatively late development, appearing sometime between the 9th and 11th century CE.

[00:06:33]You'll also need to cut out members of the onion family since they're seen as polluting, a prohibition that was probably adopted from Buddhism. Oh, and no meat, no eggs, or fish. In fact, you should probably cut out all animal products just to be safe. Though, Dowist texts don't frame this as a wellness diet. It's more like a cosmic progression. The early Dowist text, the Taiping Jing, lays out different levels of practitioners. The highest levels are people who subsist only on wind and chi and float among the celestial bodies.

[00:07:01]Heaven is distant. If one does not eat wind and chi, how can one travel fast enough to go along fully with the course of heaven? Thus, to work alongside the spirit envoys and be associated with them, one must live largely on wind and chi. At the next level down, practitioners reject ordinary food. The text says on the next level, one matches the essences of the earth. To do so, one cannot eat grains. One drinks water and uses herbs and medicinal formulas. And only at the lowest level do people eat anything like a normal diet, just in moderation, which to be clear is where most dowists throughout history have actually lived in practice. Ordinary Dowists, that is people who are not monastics or unmarried priests, generally aim for moderation rather than strict avoidance. Monastics and unmarried priests, tend to follow more restrictive rules, often avoiding meat, alcohol, the five grains, and the five strong vegetables. Today, rice is usually still permitted, though some practitioners avoided depending on lineage or personal discipline.

[00:08:00]Historically, though, more advanced practitioners took things much further, living on whatever they could forage in the mountains. Resins, seeds, mushrooms, cinnamon, and even micica. Yeah, the mineral. Legends are told of people who could survive without food for a year.

[00:08:13]According to Gahong, there's a figure named Gonur who was said to have lived to be 300 years old, eating nothing but asparagus root. And depending on the source, he either survived a month or a full year eating nothing at all. So to give up grains was not just a dietary choice. It was really about transforming the body itself. As Dr. Olivia Con explains, the goal is a complete transformation and reorganization of theqi body, reverting the ordinary body back to its primordial state. Grains and these so-called strong vegetables in this framework are seen as producing decay, generating waste, and feeding harmful supernatural entities inside the body. So, they're gradually replaced with what are seen as more refined forms of nourishment, herbs, minerals, breath, and even talismatic substances, and of course, chi. Step two, embrace celibacy.

[00:09:03]Well, at least for male dowist practitioners, sex is out of the question for you if you want to actually achieve transcendence. Ejaculation was believed to drain jing, the body's most concentrated form of vital essence. Jing is the raw material out of which chi, your vital energy, is refined. And unfortunately, you're born with a finite supply. Unless you take action to replenish your chi, when it runs out, so do you. So celibacy isn't necessarily about sexual morality and dowoism. It's more about conservation. Though if celibacy sounds too difficult, you can start with the advice Master Chonguan gave to Genghask Khan. Limit yourself to sex just once a night, which really makes you wonder how much sex the Khan was having every night. And this idea of conserving and redirecting sexual energy shows up very early in a range of Chinese texts, not just dowist ones. For example, in the Leian, the biographies of exemplary immortals, the transcendent Run is said to practice techniques where sexual essence is retained and made to revert back into the body. This general idea is called returning the essence to replenish the brain or Juan jinguna.

[00:10:09]It's based on the idea that the brain, the marrow of the spinal cord and semen are the same substance and the body is a system of circulating energies. If you can reverse their normal outward flow, you can refine them. Sexual essence or jing is one of the most concentrated forms of vitality. If preserved and circulated upward, especially to the brain, it can be transformed into chi and made to nourish the embryo of the Dao, the seed of transcendence itself.

[00:10:37]For women, the equivalent essence was typically identified with menstrual blood. And women had their own highly technical form of inner alchemy referred to as nudon or female alchemy. Women were tasked with transforming blood into chi in a process described as beheading the red dragon. That is stopping or redirecting their period which was seen as a loss of vital energy. According to these texts, if done correctly, ultimately the distinction between male and female disappears altogether. The perfected body became androgynous, having transcended the ordinary processes of sex, reproduction, and decay. But it's worth saying that not all dowists agreed that celibacy was the goal. Early traditions included what are often called the arts of the bed chamber, a set of techniques for regulating sex rather than eliminating it entirely. These practices show up as early as the second century B.CE where sex is treated as another form of cultivating and exchanging chi and even the aforementioned alchemist Gahong who absolutely believed in conserving essence pushed back against total abstinence. In some of his texts, he actually warns that celibacy can be harmful. And here he probably was arguing against the celibacy of Buddhist and dowist monastics. He instead argued for controlled, properly regulated sexual practice. The key distinction isn't between sex and no sex. It's between leaking your vital energy or managing it correctly. Step three, get yourqi moving. Given the previous step, it makes sense that once you've stopped actively leaking your chi, the next step would be to do something to build it back up. If you've seen our video on chi, you'll know that dowists treat the human body as a microcosm of the cosmos.

[00:12:11]This led to a very elaborate interconnected system between the parts of your body and the planets, gods, heavens or divine places. What affected one affected the others through cosmic vibrations viaqi. This is called mutual resonance. You can see this way of imagining the body in texts like the hanging jing or scripture of the yellow court, one of the most influential dowist works from around the 3rd century CE. It describes the body as an inner landscape populated by gods dwelling in different organs. Practitioners are instructed to visualize these gods, circulate chi through the body, and even imagine celestial forces like the sun and moon within themselves. Dowists divide the human body into three sections or cineabar fields. The upper field is centered in the brain, the middle and the heart, and the lower and the lower abdomen. In each of these fields is a palace inhabited by a deity.

[00:13:02]And like all living things, these gods need to eat. But they don't eat food.

[00:13:06]They eat chi. As you nourish these gods, they form additional chi and send it to that embryo of the Dao, which is your transcendent or immortal form. Now, generally speaking, modern dowists don't take this literally, but they understand it as a metaphor that helps people understand the connections between the cosmos and the body. Okay. So, how do you get more chi into your body to actually do this? Great question. The answer is a combination of meditation, visualization, and special breathing techniques called fui or ingestion ofqi.

[00:13:34]A basic version looks something like this. Practitioners sit quietly with their eyes closed and hands and fists.

[00:13:39]Then they visualize chi entering into their body as they breathe quietly and evenly in through the nose. From there, they visualize the chi moving down into their lungs and then circulating through each of the cineabar fields to that fields respect of God before finally exhaling through the mouth. This is just a general guideline though. In practice, these techniques could get incredibly specific. One text called the wondrous record from the golden casket on the divine immortals eatingqi lists 33 different postures for eating chi to heal different parts of the body. For example, to treat chest and lung pain, it says sit up straight with pelvis and legs engaged. Extend the arms and spread the fingers of both hands, pressing hard against the floor. The text also notes that you should warm the chi inside your mouth and close your eyes before ingesting it. Another text, the scripture on harmonizingqi from the great clarity heaven and wow dowist texts have really incredible titles emphasizes the importance of the proper mindset while performing any internal work. Chi is ruled by the mind. If the mind is aberrant, then theqi is aberrant. If the mind is correct, then theqi is correct. It also warns practitioners to proceed slowly and carefully because if you get it wrong, you're not just wasting your time. You could actually hurt yourself. Step four, become an alchemist. If step three was about getting yourqi moving, step four is about refining it, turning it into something more stable, more powerful, and even incorruptible. Based on the principle of mutual resonance, if everything in the cosmos is composed of the same underlying elemental material, chi, then it should be possible to transform a mortal body into a transcendent body by incorporating substances that don't decay. While everything is made out of chi, not allqi is the same. Some forms are coarse and prone to decay. Others are more refined and more stable. The logic is straightforward. If something is immune to decay, then the chi that composes it must be the kind of chi that is immune to decay. After ingesting or internalizing it, the practitioner can then begin to reshape their own body's composition accordingly. And you can refine yourqi into pure existentialqi via alchemy. And you can do this via outer alchemy or inner alchemy. Widon and naon respectively. Outer alchemy is what most people picture when they hear the word alchemy. Mixing substances together to produce an elixir. And Dowist tried all kinds of elixirs made from different substances hoping to transform into transcendence. Some of the things in these elixirs were relatively benign like the mineral micica while others were medicinal herbs. But a lot of these ingredients were very very toxic. For example, dais frequently used a form of mercury called cineabar as well as lead. Cineabar also has the advantage of looking like blood when heated to a liquid. But if you heat it even more, you can produce elemental mercury, a silver liquid. To an ancient alchemist, I'm sure that kind of transformation didn't just look really cool, but it seemed promising. Arsenic compounds often show up in Dowist alchemical recipes as well. The problem, of course, is that mercury, lead, and arsenic are extremely toxic, so don't try this at home, kids. Other ingredients were far more elusive. Texts like the Bauuds describe substances called jur, often translated as numinous mushrooms. These seem to exist somewhere between the natural and the supernatural. Not exactly something you can pick up at your local grocery store.

[00:16:52]Though no one knows for sure whether these are the same as the psychoactive fungi that some of you know and love.

[00:16:58]Numinous mushrooms were believed to grow in remote mountains or mythical places, sometimes near deposits of minerals like cineabar or jade, and were thought to glow with their own light. Gahong describes one such type. The jur of the seven brilliances and the nine radiances shines a light that resembles that of the stars. By night, these lights are visible at 100 ft. But also, according to Gahung, you couldn't even see them unless the spirits of the mountain allowed it. Otherwise, one could even step right over them without seeing them. But if you didn't manage to find one and consume it, it could grant you longevity or even transcendence on par with the most powerful elixir. But I don't want you to think of outer alchemy as random quasi scientific experiments.

[00:17:37]Dowist alchemy was often treated as a highly ritualized and even sacred process. Take a text like the scripture on the elixir of gold liquor described by Gahong. According to the text, this elixir was so powerful that even cosmic beings used it to attain transcendence.

[00:17:53]The text says, "Gold Liquor is what the Grand Monad ingested so as to attain transcendence." The Grand Monad being a god who shows up in divination manuals.

[00:18:02]He's lord of the north star and a high god in his own right, almost equal in stature to the deified Laza. Apparently, he drank this elixir and became a heavenly transcendent. But you couldn't just throw ingredients together in a bucket in your garage. The scripture says those who synthesize it must fast and purify themselves for 100 days, avoiding all contact with profane persons. A chamber for concentration should be erected on the slope of a noted mountain beside an eastward flowing stream. So again, alchemy was highly ritualized and only then could you begin combining substances like gold, mercury, cineabar, and other minerals, sealing them together and allowing them to transform over time into what's called the gold liquor. And the promised effects were ambitious.

[00:18:43]After a 100 days, when the elixir is completed, if you take one ounce of it, you will transcend. Once the gold liquor enters a person's mouth, his entire body assumes a golden hue. Depending on the dose, it could grant long life, immunity from harm, or full-on transcendence, ascending to the heavens as a Shien like the Grand Monad, which sounds incredible until you remember that many of these ingredients were in fact highly toxic.

[00:19:07]So again, don't try this at home.

[00:19:09]Supposedly, no less than three of the Tong Emperors died from various elixirs of immortality created by Dowist alchemists. Shortly after that dynasty ended, pretty much everyone decided that maybe the transformation was more of a metaphysical or internal process and it stayed that way to the modern period.

[00:19:25]Which brings us to inner alchemy or naan. Inner alchemy has been practiced since the late 2nd century CE developing basically at the same time as external alchemy. But controlled breathing while sitting and meditation has never been as flashy and hasn't killed any emperors.

[00:19:40]So I feel like it hasn't gotten enough attention. But both forms of alchemy have the same goal. Becoming a transcendent, joining the ranks of celestial beings, or even merging one's spirit with a Dao itself. However it's described, the idea is that the practitioner is undergoing a transformation into a different kind of being. The difference is that outer alchemy works with substances in a crucible while inner alchemy transforms the substances of the body through special patterns of breathing and visualized meditation. In Daist sources, Naon is sometimes called Jind Dando or way of the golden elixir. And most Dowist texts describe inner alchemy as unfolding in a series of stages, sometimes called the three accomplishments or the three vehicles, an idea lifted from Buddhism. To get there, practitioners work through a sequence of transformations that map onto what Daist see as the three basic components of a human being. We've already seen Jing and Chi, essence and vital energy, but there's also Shen or spirit. First you refine jing intoq chi and then you refine chi into shen and finally you refine spirit and return it to emptiness. Each step represents a movement towards something more subtle, more unified and less tied to this ordinary physical body. If this process is successful, it produces what daist call the inner elixir or the embryo of the Dao. The idea is that through sustained practice, you are quite literally generating a new, more refined form of life within yourself. And when that process is complete, the practitioner under goes a kind of return to the origin, transcending the normal constraints of space, time, and the physical body. Like I said, inner alchemy is mostly done through meditation. The practitioner sits, regulates their breathing, and uses visualization to guide chi through the body. And these visualizations map the processes of alchemy onto the body itself. You first prepare the body as an inner laboratory. Then you gather the ingredients, not physical substances, but gathering energies within your body through controlled breathing and focused attention. What texts call huaho or fire phasing. You circulate and refine those energies. Basically, as the scholar of Chinese religion, Monica Espacito says, huah is the rhythm of the inner alchemical work. The alchemist knows how to measure the ingredients, when to increase or decrease the fire. As this continues, the embryo of the Dao forms within the body, and over time, it's nourished and developed through repeated practice. And eventually, at least in theory, it reaches full maturity. At that point, what's born is not just a better version of you, but a fundamentally different kind of being.

[00:22:12]Underlying all of this is a deeper principle that we saw in the section on sex, reversal. In ordinary life, everything moves outward toward growth, toward aging, toward eventual decline and decay. Inner alchemy tries to reverse that process, drawing everything back inward toward its source. The end result is a complete reintegration into the Dao, a return to a state before distinctions, before form, before even the self. A typical example of inner alchemy reads something like this, which is a passage from the outer chapters of the scripture of the yellow court. It's a famous work on how to meditate.

[00:22:47]Passing the breath down through the throat. How can it be scattered? Let all the body gods gather to mutually seek it. Descending to enter the heart, it appears as purple blossoms stored hidden in the ribs. It penetrates the god's abodess, which is a reference to the major organs concentrated in the nearby heart. It moves on to the minister or the lungs and is exhaled. I observe all my body gods repel and get rid of evil.

[00:23:12]The spleen god returns. The store nourishes the numinous roots which are no longer withered. It reaches as far as the stomach passing through to the void.

[00:23:20]Stop up the gate of life which is the space between the kidneys. You will live for 10,000 years and then some. The text goes on to say that while performing this meditation, the practitioner should visualize the chi being refined by the triple burners of the heart before descending down into the void. That part of the body where the cineabar pearl or the embryo of the Dao is formed. Step five is practice, practice, practice.

[00:23:44]Practice everything you've been taught for years. One woman seeking transcendence chanted the scripture of the yellow court multiple times a day for over a decade before she could even move on to more advanced practices. If you're lucky, you'll meet a transcendent who will recognize your efforts and deem you worthy of being taught their own secret methods, which will speed up the process. This happened to the woman.

[00:24:06]After 13 years of consistent practice, she started receiving celestial visitors. Eventually, the goddess Wei Huatan, aka the primal ruler of the purple barrens, who governs the southern quadrant, became her teacher and gave her the elixir of immortality. And wow, dowist gods have really cool names, too.

[00:24:23]But had to refine herself in her practice for another 8 years before she was permitted to ingest it. Her heography even tells us that she had to flee with her family across China when a major rebellion broke out. Despite the chaos, Schuay was diligent in her meditation. Again, this woman was so devoted, she kept up her practice while the central government was collapsing, and it was still another 2 years before her ascent to the heavens. So, transcendence is usually not instantaneous. We don't know how old she was when she started, but the text implies she had to dedicate herself to Dowoism for at least 34 years before she achieved transcendence. Historically, plenty of dowists became hermits or monks or nuns because they found it easier to practice in seclusion, but it's by no means a requirement. So, no, I'm sorry to say Daoism doesn't offer a simple five-step path to living forever.

[00:25:08]What it does offer is a whole set of techniques for transforming the body, the mind, and even the very stuff you're made of. Diet, sex, breath, visualization, alchemy, they're all part of this project to take a body that leaks, decays, and dies, and gradually re-engineer it into something more stable, more refined, and less bound to ordinary life. And if dowist immortality is about extending life indefinitely, it's worth looking at the flip side of that coin. My fellow creator Sarah Zed just released a video called Three Dead Girls I Love, which in fact, and I know this is going to surprise you, is a video about three dead girls. She looks at Lady Jane Gray, a disputed queen of England who went from her coronation to execution in just a matter of days.

[00:25:48]Also, Arseno IV, Cleopatra's younger sister and rival caught up in a dynastic struggle. and Hildigart Rodriguez Carbaya, a Spanish child prodigy whose life ended in a deeply disturbing murder at the hands of her mother. This essay is so good and not in a here are three tragic biography sort of way. It's about historical eraser. Sarah Zed makes a compelling case that we know so little about the first 15 years or so of these girls' lives, but then suddenly history becomes obsessed with the final stretch, the execution, the scandal, the murder.

[00:26:18]Their deaths wind up outshining their intelligence, their personality, and whatever they might have become. And you can watch this only on Nebula. This kind of thoughtful creator-driven video essay is why Nebula is so great. We're a creatorowned streaming platform where you can watch videos from people like me, Sarah Zed, Lindsay Ellis, and a whole bunch of folks who care deeply about their craft of content creation.

[00:26:38]So, for example, take the urbanist content on Nebula. This might surprise you, but I don't actually spend my free time watching religion content. I watch stuff about cities, transit, urban planning, bike lanes, and Nebula has some really great stuff in that space.

[00:26:51]For example, there's a new season of our travel competition show, Jetlag the Game. It's called Taiwan Rail Rush, where teams crisscross the island trying to capture as many train stations as possible in 5 days. It's chaotic and somehow turns public transportation into an on the ground strategy game. There's also a new original show called Day Pass by Jason Slaughter, better known as the sultry voice behind not just bikes. In Day Pass, he visits a city and tries to do as much as possible using only public transit. It's great content if you're the type of person who's ever opened up Google Maps and then tried sketching a light rail system for the car dependent suburb where you grew up. And yes, of course, I'm speaking autobiographically here. So, if you want to watch any of the amazing content we're making over at Nebula, head on over to nebula.tv/religion for breakfast. Now's a great time because we're offering 50% off an annual subscription if you use my link. That's just $30 a year or about $25 a month.

[00:27:42]But if you're the type of person who doesn't want a subscription, we also have a lifetime option. It's normally $500, but with my link, you can get it for $300. Again, sign up at nebula.tv/reforre.

[00:27:52]Thanks, everyone.