Question has been asked: according to Tao alchemy principles, is the physical body immortal? The issue can be simplified. Jing , chi, shen (body substance, energy, and intelligence/spirit) are all one, and all disappear together into and emerge out of the Wuji, the Supreme Unknown. Ther wuji is NOT a true void, more a womb of unknown origin. If either spirit or substance or energy lives, they all live. If one dies, they all die.
Spirit and substance are just two ends of the same pole, connected by energy. The movement of their apparent life and death is not just between body and spirit, but between wuji/ Unknown and creation/Known. So even the infinite field of Original Spirit has to face this Unknown. The Original Spirit (Yuan Shen) is closest to the wuji, the other levels of spirit (in stars, planets, or human bodies) are dimensionally (i.e. vibrationally) more distant. But all claim the wuji as their grandmother.
Jing, chi, and shen all have equal and simultaneous reality, and need each other to know themselves. How does spirit know that it exists except by Body/jing’s presence? That is what ensures Body’s Immortality. Otherwise Original Spirit would just snap it fingers in the causal plane and disappear in a second this entire troubled physical plane. It doesn’t do this, because it NEEDS for body/substance to evolve itself back into its original immortal state of awareness.
But we could speculate that Immortality itself, the Eternal Life of Spirit integrated with Body, ceases to exist and becomes something else in the presence of the Supreme “Black Hole” of Wuji. Perhaps we cauld call it Non-Mortality, or Amortality? I wish I were close enough to even pose the question to the proper Presence or Absence.
Smiling at this Headiiness,
Michael Winn
2001