6. The "lower two passes" are the first two stages of a traditional
formulation of Taoist spiritual alchemy: "refining vitality into energy"
and "refining energy into spirit" The "upper pass" is the stage of
"refining spirit into openness." At this point "Heaven directly divulges
the unsurpassed doctrine" in the sense that knowledge comes
spontaneously through elevation of consciousness rather than by formal
learning.
7. The "outside" is surface consciousness, the "inside" is the "true sense of
real knowledge" hidden below. To "control the inside from the outside"
means to reach deliberately for this real knowledge and stabilize its
connection with consciousness. To "control the outside from the inside"
means to be rooted in real knowledge and thereby spontaneously control the
activity of the conscious mind. The "master" is the true sense of real
knowledge; the "assistant" is the conscious mind.
8. The celestial mind is a Taoist term for what Chan Buddhists call the
original mind. This refers to the mind as it is in its pristine state unaffected
by temporal conditioning.
9. This section of the text, particularly from this passage onward, is more
thickly veiled than ever in the garb of Taoist alchemical language. Here the
meaning becomes ambiguous in the sense that it can be interpreted in terms
of the waterwheel exercise of Taoist energetics so popular in the Southern
School of Complete Reality, or in purely spiritual terms characteristic of
