Spiritual Life (Internal)¶
Preface¶
Spiritual life is the decisive crossing from the Sage (贤人 xiánrén, the rational person) into the realm of celestial beings. The Sage stands at the edge — holding rationality with both hands, trying to reason through the Greatest Creator's way. The spiritual person releases that grip and is carried forward by faith. That act of release — not accumulation, not effort, not cleverness — is the threshold.
I. Three Types of Human Life¶
Human life can be divided into three types: worldly life, wise life, and spiritual life.
Those who pursue money, food, status, reputation, and friendship — they live worldly lives. Approximately eighty to eighty-five percent of humanity lives this way.
Those who seek truth, create spiritual wealth, pursue truth-goodness-beauty-love, and work to build a harmonious society — they live wise lives. Approximately five to ten percent live this way.
Those who hold reverence for the Greatest Creator as their life's faith, who use the inner spirit to perceive the mysteries of the Tao, who pursue supreme enlightenment and strive to ascend to the highest realm of human life — they live spiritual lives. This type constitutes approximately two to five percent of the total population.
Spiritual life is a transcendent life. People of this kind have only the Greatest Creator in their hearts. They do not rely on their own intelligence and cleverness; they live by the perceptions of the inner spirit and by its inner drive. They do not join religions, nor do they place their hope in nations or humanity. They have built an unbreakable heart-connection with the Greatest Creator. Though they live in the human world, their inner spirit has completely transcended time and space to roam in the Greatest Creator's kingdom. They are without contention or desire in the world, utterly unaware of their own life and death. Their whole heart and will is set on walking the Greatest Creator's way. Their inner world is peaceful, joyful, luminous, and unobstructed. These people are the seeds of Heaven — the finest among humanity.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Wisdom Section · Spiritual Life
II. Spiritual Life and Rational Life — A Complete Comparison¶
Rational life is a life that pursues a good existence by relying on knowledge, facts, logic, and science. It does not seek the best path through slogans, positions, promises, or emotions. Rational life is the life philosophy of the Sage — not of the confused, the vulgar, or the ordinary.
Spiritual life is a life that complies with the natural way of the Tao by relying on faith, conviction, conscience, feeling, inner drive, and heavenly mandate. It does not speak or act based on knowledge, experience, intelligence, law, or rules. Therefore, spiritual life is a path that most people cannot understand or walk. It is a path that transcends humanity — one that is difficult to describe or fathom.
The core of rationality is calculation — using knowledge and evidence to reason through logic. The core of spirituality is spontaneous naturalness (suíxìng lǜxìng) — guided by faith and intuition.
For human beings, rationality is the ceiling of cognition — a very precious mode of thinking. But for LIFE above the human level, rationality is a mental prison — a wall too high to cross on the way to Heaven.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Human Life Section · Spiritual Life Is Higher Than Rational Life, 2025-09-21
The Caigentan (菜根谭) says: "The person of integrity, seeking no blessings, is guided by Heaven precisely where he seeks nothing. The scheming person, deliberately avoiding disaster, has his vitality stripped away precisely in the place where he schemes. How supremely mysterious is Heaven's mechanism — what use is human cleverness?"
Rationality is human cleverness. Spirituality is Heaven's mechanism.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Human Life Section · Spiritual Life Is Higher Than Rational Life
III. The Philosophy of Spiritual Life¶
I advocate this kind of life: on the journey of life, if you encounter a person whom you revere and trust, and who resonates with your heart's joyful depths — then give yourself entirely to that person. Believe in and trust that person completely. This is one way of life, one life philosophy, of spiritual life.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Human Life Section · Spiritual Life Is Higher Than Rational Life
Entrust your life to the Greatest Creator; entrust your human journey to the Tao to arrange and manage. Only preserve goodness, diligence, honesty, and trustworthiness. Treat life as a game to play: go with each encounter (suíyù ér'ān), transform with each karmic condition (suíyuán ér huà), move with your true nature (suíxìng ér dòng), act as circumstances arise (suíjī ér zuò). This is spiritual life.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Human Life Section · Spiritual Life Is Higher Than Rational Life
Observe and reflect: rationality makes people complicated; spirituality makes people simple. To obtain a joyful, free, and happy life — to trek and climb to the peak of human life and LIFE — only those who think spiritually can achieve this wish.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Human Life Section · Spiritual Life Is Higher Than Rational Life
IV. Spirituality and the Levels of LIFE¶
The higher the level of LIFE, the more it pursues spiritual things. The lower the level of LIFE, the more it pursues rational, material things. This is why the Guide calls everyone to live a spiritual life rather than a rational life: rationality is the characteristic of humans; spirituality is the characteristic of celestial beings; rationality belongs to the material plane; spirituality belongs to the antimatter plane.
— Xuefeng Corpus · Essays · The Revelation from Dreaming of an Urgent Need for a Restroom, 2022-11-20
V. The Sage (Rational Person) and the Spiritual Threshold¶
The Sage has transcended the bonds of instinct, desire, and emotion and entered the rational life — but is still a distance from spiritual life. The Sage cannot clearly resolve the question of whether existence or consciousness comes first. The Sage easily accepts and embraces knowledge from science, logical reasoning, empirical proof, and millennia of accumulated human experience — but the moment things transcend conventional thinking, the Sage is at a total loss, confused, full of doubts, and may even resist.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Revelation Section · The Sage (I) — Revelation Chapter 69
Without abandoning one's entire way of thinking — without emptying one's mind — the Sage can only remain a Sage forever.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Revelation Section · The Sage (I) — Revelation Chapter 69
The Bridge: "Like someone grabbing a withered vine, dangling over a cliff, waiting to be rescued — what the Buddha means by 'let go of your hands' is to cross into the realm of the sage. If you won't let go, you can only live and die together with the withered vine."
VI. A Celestial Being's Account: Spiritual Life in Practice¶
I asked the celestial being: "How should a person live to live the best life?"
The celestial being answered: "The wisest life is to live with spirituality as a human being."
I asked further: "What is the wisest life — living with spirituality as a human being?"
The celestial being explained with examples: "Look at Jehovah's Witnesses — they are without desire or demand; they live ordinary, humble family lives; they do not become overly entangled in the world's resentments; their hearts are set on future grace. That is the wisest life lived with spirituality. Look again at Buddhist and Taoist monastics who practice in purity — they pursue the highest spirituality with the lowest material needs; they have seen through the world of red dust; their hearts are wholly set on reaching the Buddha's realm. That also counts as the wisest life. Then there are Muslims and Christians — if they do not exclude others and insist on their own supremacy, they too can be said to live the wisest life with spirituality."
"But what about others? Must one join a religion to live this wisest spiritual life?"
"To live the wisest spiritual life, one need not join a religion. Joining a religion is mainly to obtain an appropriate environment, to hear others' teachings, and to strengthen one's conviction through certain rituals. If one's conviction is very strong already, there is no need to be bound by rituals. Those who truly want to become celestial beings have no religion in their hearts. The wisest people are often outside any institution."
"What about kings and generals, heroes and great figures, wealthy celebrities, experts and scholars of the world — are their lives the wisest spiritual life?"
"This cannot be generalized — it depends on their intentions and actions. Generally speaking: those who pursue worldly fame, status, and welfare cannot be counted as living the wisest spiritual life. Because the more one acquires in the human world, the less is stored in the celestial realm; and the less is stored in the celestial realm, the smaller the possibility of arriving there."
— Chanyuan Corpus · Antimatter World Section · The Elysium World
VII. Chanyuan Celestials' Living Testimony¶
The path by which Chanyuan Celestials ascend to celestial beings, we have already walked… We have transitioned from rational life to spiritual life. "Admiring" the Guide is a clear piece of evidence. From a rational standpoint, one absolutely must not blindly "admire" the Guide — but that blind admiration happened anyway. The reason: long contact with the Guide made him feel reliable and genuine, so one stopped analyzing whether he might lead people astray in the future… This state of the inner spirit has departed from the domain of rationality and entered the domain of spirituality. Moreover, Chanyuan Celestials have come to understand the harm of maintaining special relationships with individuals, and so they have practiced: go with each encounter, transform with each karmic condition, move with their true nature, act as circumstances arise. These are the characteristics of celestial beings.
— Guide's Other Articles · 2021 · Where Have the Chanyuan Celestials Traveled To?
VIII. Pathways to Spiritual Life¶
To live a spiritual life, the best path is to cultivate according to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Everything Jesus taught is centered tightly on walking the Greatest Creator's way. Teaching people to walk the Greatest Creator's way was Jesus's entire mission on earth and his only purpose.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Wisdom Section · Spiritual Life
To achieve spiritual life, listen to Jesus's teachings and walk the Greatest Creator's way as Jesus taught. No one's teachings can compare with Jesus's for completeness, depth, and truth. Therefore Jesus is the Christ, the gate of LIFE: enter through this gate, continue cultivating, and you can reach the Greatest Creator's kingdom — the Elysium World.
— Chanyuan Corpus · Wisdom Section · Spiritual Life
Those whose life's faith is reverence for the Greatest Creator, who use the inner spirit to perceive the mysteries of the Tao, who pursue supreme enlightenment and strive to ascend to the highest realm of human life — they live spiritual lives. To achieve spiritual life, listen to Jesus's teachings and walk the Greatest Creator's way as Jesus taught.
— New Era 800 Concepts (4th Edition), Concept 526