Reflections on Feng Shui and China
by D. Harald Alke
Feng Shui – advantages and disadvantages of a traditional method
Over the past 35 years, since around 1985, books on Feng Shui have been appearing more and more frequently in German bookshops. These books are very different in their presentation and the content they convey. Feng Shui (wind and water) is the Chinese term for an ancient method of designing one’s own environment with the aim of creating positive energy and averting bad energy. This is said to have a positive effect on the quality of life and the personal success of a family or company. FENG SHUI is also used for landscaping. Wind and water flow through the landscape and follow their own laws. The water only ever flows downhill, and yet after a while it reappears at the highest peak, thanks to the rain. Along the way, it first fills up every depression, creating ponds and lakes, before flowing on. It is an eternal cycle. It is the same with our energy. If we observe these laws, we learn how to deal with natural resources, because these forces work on all levels. There are global currents that transport and distribute large quantities of wind and water and thus also temperature conditions (heat and cold) between continents and regions. Regionally and locally, wind and water influence all living conditions for plants and animals. Prana also flows with these currents and accumulates to a greater extent in particular places. Prana comes with the light from the sun, but it loves special situations. It can choose a place and charge it, or it can “dilute” and withdraw energy from a place. In feng shui, we refer to prana as chi. Consistent with the universal law “as in the great so in the small”, the currents of Feng and Shui are naturally also reflected in our immediate surroundings, in our place, our property, our house and in every single room. A Feng Shui master knows how to recognize these local currents and change them positively through creative measures. In this way, he eliminates disturbances and allows the energy to flow freely in the house. Often a tiny intervention in the local order has enormous consequences. The energy begins to flow properly. We get a feel-good effect. Our energy and our performance increase. With the energy pyramids we pursue exactly the same goals, only with a different, new method. As the energy pyramids are aimed at people who want to make their home and living space more positive, we also have to deal with the ideas of FENG SHUI. In the meantime, such a wealth of information has accumulated that it is worth writing a separate chapter on the art, benefits and risks of FENG SHUI. On my homepage you will find a table with the most common indications of FENG SHUI. There are certain fundamentals that are accepted by most FENG SHUI masters, but on many points these masters do not agree with each other at all. On the contrary! FENG SHUI goes back to the teachings of Vastu Shastra from India, which were brought to China by the monk Bodhidharma around 800 BC. More detailed explanations follow below. Of course, all other peoples have also developed similar methods. Here in Europe we have the problem that the old Germanic and Celtic methods were destroyed in the course of Christianization. At the same time, the Christian builders developed their own system for building houses, creating cathedrals and designing large gardens. Just think of Louis XIV’s Versailles or Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci. All of these building systems were associated with the prevailing religious system in the various cultures by the respective master builders. Important buildings were dedicated to the respective gods at all times. They were erected according to astrological plans, religious rituals, invoking the respective gods, accompanied by sacrificial ceremonies. The early master builders understood something about these things. They were priests, diviners, astrologers, mathematicians, artists and stonemasons all rolled into one. The members of the old German craftsmen’s guilds were also aware of these connections. It is only in the last 100 years that the esoteric and spiritual aspects of house building or landscape design have increasingly gone out of fashion. On the one hand, this is due to people’s increasingly materialistic thinking, and on the other hand, overpopulation in Western European countries has increased so much that most people today are happy to be able to afford a plot of land or a house at all. Under these conditions, the desire for an optimally located plot of land quickly fades into the background. Most people only start to think about their living situation again when their discomfort increases over the years or illnesses occur, and then they start to look for the causes, perhaps buying a book on FENG SHUI or consulting a dowser. My following contributions are intended to provoke critical reflection. I expressly welcome the principles of FENG SHUI. They can improve our lives. However, in recent years I have noticed numerous shortcomings which have prompted me to write these critical reports. Those who seriously advise their clients with Feng Shui will understand me. However, this is only possible if we can maintain a healthy distance from classical feng shui after studying the basics. We need Feng Shui knowledge that recognizes, respects and promotes our western needs and interests. Fortunately, there are already quite a few German Feng Shui specialists who have cut themselves off!
Is Chinese Feng Shui directly applicable and of practical use to us? Can it help us to organize our everyday lives more successfully?
When we deal with FENG SHUI, we must first realize that all the information given there comes from a 3000 year old Chinese culture and tradition. If you want to get a personal impression of this culture and tradition, it is best to look at films and photo books about China. You must first get an impression of the architecture, the houses, the slums, the palaces, the landscape and the people, how they dress, how they behave, what kind of feeling comes over to us! For this purpose, you should also watch the ordinary Kung Fu films that are still set in ancient China, because the confrontations in these films clearly express the Chinese people’s view of morality and honor. While we in the West are used to the fact that in our action films the heroes still display a certain fairness, which distinguishes them from the criminals, in Chinese films it is completely normal for several fighters to attack an opponent in order to liquidate him. The goal is only to win at any cost, and the end justifies the means. You should keep this aspect in mind if you are thinking of hiring a Chinese FENG SHUI master to plan your company or home. This master also wants to win at all costs and according to his method. So this is completely normal. If we have received new impressions from different sources, we must consider whether we want to aspire to a similar way of life. Do you want to live and act like the Chinese in the movies? Or would you like to design your house in a similar way? If we consider that we have all been incarnated countless times on this earth, then we have certainly lived in China before, and of course some of us still carry hidden memories of this foreign culture. So some people will feel strongly drawn there. However, most Europeans will consider China and its culture more as a fascinating vacation destination than as a place to live or to remodel a German house in this way. So before we start redesigning our own living space according to the rules of traditional FENG SHUI, we should have a good idea of how we really want to live! Probably not Chinese, but rather Western, but better than before! If we approach the matter with a little patience and, above all, a lot of sensitivity, we can learn a lot from the FENG SHUI books without having an exotic bell jar imposed on us, in which we later feel no better than before all the changes and investments.
Practical example:
There are a whole series of small truths and wisdoms from FENG SHUI that are generally applicable. For example, it is not pleasant to sit on a chair or sofa and have to look straight ahead at the edge of a protruding wall, e.g. the edge of a chimney. In this case, however, the easiest thing to do would be to move the furniture and not make the chimney disappear through a plasterboard wall and lose living space in the process. Of course, it would be possible to make the chimney disappear by using a plasterboard panel and to build shelves into the wall cladding to the right and left of the chimney. However, it is also much easier to dispense with the cladding and install a suitable shelf with a triangular cross-section on both sides of the chimney, so that this protruding edge is defused. This example shows that some FENG SHUI instructions make sense, but that you have to use your own intuition and expertise to implement the simple instructions in order to achieve a pleasant result with as little effort as possible.
Let me give you another example:
FENG SHUI requires that toilets and washrooms are not directly visible when guests arrive. Of course, this makes sense in traditional China, where they were outhouses and the showers were just a trellis wall reaching from the knees to the shoulders. Since our modern bathrooms are designed quite differently and guarantee the desirable seclusion, it makes no difference at all whether this shower and toilet room is at the beginning or end of a corridor. You walk past it without paying any further attention to it. Of course, the door to a bathroom should be closed. Guests should not be confronted directly with a view of a toilet when they enter a home. So FENG SHUI is right again. The French habit of installing bathrooms or showers almost always without toilets, and the toilets are always in a separate room, also fits in here. However, I don’t think that’s ideal either, rather both a bathroom with toilet + a separate guest toilet.
As a 3rd example, I would like to mention the kitchen.
According to FENG SHUI, the kitchen must not be located next to the toilet and washroom. The explanation is above. The smell of an outhouse should certainly not permeate the kitchen! But for our kitchens and bathrooms with closed walls and sanitary facilities, this instruction is irrelevant. It is practical if the rooms with water connections are next to each other and of course have separate windows and doors.
4th example:
If you invite guests over for a social evening or perhaps even to discuss a business matter, then the whole apartment should not smell strongly of the kitchen and the food that will be served later. If we welcome guests with a strong smell of food, they are automatically on the food level, i.e. preoccupied with their instincts and not particularly responsive to business. Concluding a deal means going hunting and being successful. Afterwards, when you have brought the prey home, you can eat it. If you smell the already roasted prey first, the desire to make a deal, i.e. to hunt, is much less. Open-plan living areas in modern, generously designed western-style houses are therefore not very conducive, either you can hear the strong exhaust from the kitchen area or you can smell the food… especially if something burns. From these examples, you can see that FENG SHUI does indeed reflect simple contents that play a role in our lives, but we should not overemphasize these factors, but rather implement them according to our Western customs and draw our own conclusions from them.
The color theory of Feng Shui
The Chinese color theory is a difficult chapter for Westerners. I have entered these colors and their assignment to the various cardinal points in my graphic. At the same time, certain human abilities, areas of life and organs are assigned to the colors. In my diagram, the traditional colors are shown in the rectangular fields, together with the associated terms and colors.
Let’s take an example: If you want to promote fame and reputation according to FENG SHUI, then you should arrange a reception room or living room in a house facing south and design it predominantly in strong red colors. This would be good for the eyes and would allow the power of fire to take effect. I don’t think it takes much imagination for a European to realize that these instructions have very little to do with our cultural sensibilities and would therefore not be at all beneficial. Would you like to sit in a bright red living room or welcome your business guests in a red reception room? That would be diametrically opposed to Western needs! The choice will depend on the mindset of the individual and their profession or company. It remains to be seen whether you prefer a modern style of living and perhaps furnish the reception rooms in light leather and birch wood furniture, or whether you prefer a conservative style of living with heavy oak wood furniture. Both are considered suitable in Europe. A computer company may choose to decorate everything in subtle gray because their clients are intellectual thinkers who don’t want to be distracted by bold colors. A Bavarian farmer will probably find oak furniture dignified and positive, and his modern-minded daughter works in a Munich gallery. Pop art is the order of the day in her apartment. No matter what you choose, we can enhance any interior style with a few beautiful green plants and an aquarium or indoor fountain. Plants and fish signal life and vitality as well as good fishing results. We know from psychoanalysis that people in all countries also equate fish with wealth, i.e. in the traditional sense with easy prey. In this respect, the statements of FENG SHUI coincide exactly with Western research and culture. The connection between fish, Feng Shui and wealth goes much deeper. When I studied Feng Shui and Tai Chi intensively for some time, it became clear from the exercises that the source of this special knowledge goes back to people in ancient China who lived as fishermen on large rivers. They used Tai Chi to be able to stand safely in swaying boats, to be able to cast their nets successfully and to be able to haul in the filled nets. They had to master Feng Shui and Tai Chi in order to read from experience, from the currents, where the fish were gathering, at what time of day and in what light, and they always had to keep their balance in swaying boats, especially when hauling in the full nets.
The true secret of these powers was only ever passed on within the respective family clan and never revealed to strangers like us. And this is still true today. We will only ever be taught a limited and incomplete partial knowledge by Asian masters. The different furnishing styles are completely okay. It would be inappropriate for our well-being if we were to change our personal choice of interior design based on ancient Chinese color theory. I would not recommend to any family with a residential and commercial building and a store to orient the store to the south-east and paint it in red, purple and blue, while at the same time painting the children’s room in white, the master bedroom in bright pink or orange and the master’s office in black. The kitchen and dining room will then be on the east side and painted green. They serve health purposes and are where the family meets. These are all unhelpful instructions. The more we delve into the details of FENG SHUI, the more difficult it becomes to recognize the practical advantage for our way of life. You can see for yourself that these instructions make little sense. Our gut feeling evaluates the colors differently. If we want to derive practical benefit from FENG SHUI, we must therefore critically examine all the instructions we find in the books or from today’s masters. Some of them are useful, but unfortunately many are not. There is now a whole FENG SHUI industry that produces many decorative, often useless articles on a large scale, with which we can supposedly correct the misdirected energy in our home. The new FENG SHUI industry is a thriving export sector for Asian companies, costs our good money and only rarely brings about real positive change. Of course, we can do a lot to make our property, house, apartment and every single room more positive! But personal needs can only be regulated in the interests of the individual if that person also develops the right feeling for their environment! The easiest way is really to dispense with all these complicated instructions and simply set up an energy pyramid in your home, where you like it best! You will soon notice a feeling of harmony throughout your house, so that many complicated measures will be superfluous after such an energy pyramid has been set up. Soon after you have set up an energy pyramid, you yourself will gain a new, finer sense of which parts of your home are already well furnished and have a good aura, and in which other rooms it would make sense to make changes. If you then practise some pranayama (breathing and concentration exercises) with your energy pyramid, you will feel the energy of the pyramid more and more clearly. Your sense of harmony will become more and more precise and you will soon be able to see every object in your home to see whether it is in the right place, should be changed or perhaps disposed of. In this way, the power for change comes from within you! So you no longer need a FENG SHUI consultant, but can redesign your living space from your own intuition, inspired by the power of the energy pyramids. We can develop this sensitivity for ambience, for design and colors, for a certain style of living ourselves! To do this, you can obtain Western books and catalogs on home decor and furnishings. Modern designers would be stupid if they didn’t pay attention to the major trends in people’s needs and feelings! This is another crucial point: Chinese culture stagnated at almost the same level for around 1000 years under strict leadership. In such a firmly cemented culture, in which no one was allowed to break the rules, it was completely normal for cultural instructions to be given with FENG SHUI, which made everything run along predetermined lines. FENG SHUI was therefore an instruction on how to behave in a conformist manner and only use certain subtleties and finesses to make your own property stand out from the others and look better. This cultural stagnation does not fit in at all with our Western need for frequent variety and change. Modern China proves us right: those who can afford it now live in China in western style without regard for FENG SHUI! This alone should give food for thought to anyone who is fascinated by FENG SHUI. If the Chinese themselves no longer pay attention to it, then for Europe and the USA it will just be a fashion trend, something new that we want to try out, but not a must that will significantly improve our lives. So the question should not be: How can I use FENG SHUI to add a Chinese touch to my Western home decor, but rather: How can I use FENG SHUI to redesign my home so that I feel really comfortable in it? Every person has a certain energy level. His home is adapted to this. As soon as their personal energy changes, their interest in changing their living space grows. To improve personal perception, a yoga course, pranayama (breathing and concentration exercises) and energy training (Kundalini Yoga) are much more suitable than a pile of books on FENG SHUI or a seminar on the complicated astrology of the Chinese, the flying stars, dragons, turtles etc. The knowledge of Western astrology, which has developed over 1000 years and is based on Arabic astrology, is much closer to us than the Chinese calculations on the same subject. Studying elaborate ideological systems such as the genuine teachings of FENG SHUI from a particular school and a particular master hardly leads to an improvement in one’s own intuition. If you want to acquire these teachings, you have to memorize a wealth of individual symbols, practically the basics of the Chinese language, combined with an almost endless list of conditions, cross-connections and exceptions. This is much more time-consuming than European astrology and Indian numerology combined. Of course you can do it. Anyone who enjoys this kind of thing should go ahead and do it! But please bear in mind that any kind of intellectual study tends to distance us from our own intuition and rarely brings us closer to it! The more so-called facts you have to study in order to understand and apply the complicated FENG SHUI tables, the more you are guaranteed to get away from your own way of thinking. In the end, you may even believe it, because if you have to go to great lengths to learn such a system, you will be impressed with yourself and your academic performance! And after all, you want something for your money! It’s great how much effort you have to go to in order to understand how a Chinese FENG SHUI master puts on a big show, only to give a simple instruction at the end, e.g. to put up a trellis wall so that you no longer have to look at your neighbor’s compost heap from your own terrace or at an annoying neon sign 50 m away on a house. Of course, it is right to take measures to conceal unpleasant things, but this can be done much more quickly and effectively if we encourage our intuition and simply pay attention to our personal gut feeling! In my opinion, the aim should be for the individual to be well informed and versatile, to develop and train his or her sensitive perceptions so that he or she is able to shape his or her own premises or home according to his or her inner needs. And of course we can find interesting suggestions in many FENG SHUI books. Of course, anything you personally like is allowed! Your gut feeling must be right, then your intuition will be right.
If you would like to design your home according to Chinese patterns, you are welcome to do so. Perhaps you are the reincarnation of a Chinese person and will get a feeling of home with such furnishings. But I suspect that most Western Europeans prefer a different style. I have often been impressed by Chinese objects. The Chinese are excellent craftsmen and artists, but when I bought a lamp, for example, and wanted to hang it up, it was such a foreign body in my European-style apartment that I removed it again.
The tradition of the Feng Shui masters and the Asian idea of success
As already briefly mentioned, there are various FENG SHUI systems, each of which comes from a specific tradition. This tradition goes back to certain monasteries in different regions of China. Originally, this FENG SHUI knowledge was a kind of secret doctrine that was closely linked to the religion of the country in question. China is as large as Western Europe and, like Europe, was once made up of many countries with different peoples, cultures and religions. Before Buddhism and alongside Taoism, these religions were animistic nature religions. Natural forces, spirits, demons and the spirits of the deceased were invoked and worshipped. It was precisely these animistic religions that were the source of traditional Feng Shui. Much was done exclusively to do the gods, demons and spirits of the dead a favor, to appease, attract and use these forces, or to deter and drive them away. The Chinese and many other Asian peoples as far away as the South Seas believe that the spirits of the dead are still connected to a people and a family. In this tradition, a people or clan consists of a certain number of currently living people (and animals) and a much larger number of deceased people who live and work together with the living. The spirits of the dead influence the actions of the living! The living ask the dead for assistance in their business dealings, in disputes with other people, or in the choice of marriage partners for the next generation. Part of the FENG SHUI is exclusively for this purpose. FENG SHUI is intended to help regulate conditions between the living and the dead, as well as with the gods and demons. These methods are not exactly popular here in the West. In FENG SHUI they are the core of the system, but at the same time a “trade secret” of the respective master and his clan. For this reason, you will never know why a FENG SHUI master you engage gives you a particular instruction. He may consult the symbols for the dead in his astrological chart and tell you something about the wind in that region! All classical Chinese characters and symbols have multiple meanings: They are characters a) in a secular sense for Everyman, for language/writing and b) in a religious sense. However, only monks understand this religious script. In addition, there are c) mythical and magical meanings for all characters, which are also only understood by the appropriately educated monks and masters and not by everyone. Regardless of which master you would like to study FENG SHUI with, they are guaranteed not to tell you the secret meanings behind the worldly statements. All these genuine masters are bound not to reveal the secrets of their tradition to outsiders. These are the mystical secrets of individual clans and secret orders. There really are worlds between us and these people! As soon as you take a closer look at one of these systems, you realize that all these masters strive to praise themselves highly and present the other providers in a bad light. There is no question of “serious competition” or “friendly cooperation”. In Asia, especially in the area influenced by China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, it is considered chic to brag about one’s own successes and denigrate competitors. It is almost expected to brag about one’s salary, or one’s possessions, the contracts one has been awarded, and so on. This is a behavior that we are not familiar with in Europe or America. Western people tend to treat their personal successes as an intimate private matter. You can only recognize success by your lifestyle, your style of dress, your house or your car. FENG SHUI followers of different schools are engaged in outright wars to see who can succeed in advising a certain major company, preferably with all its branches worldwide. Once a company has come into the advisory circle and influence of a FENG SHUI master, it must expect that competing companies will hire other FENG SHUI masters to fight this company with their perhaps good successes, also using the methods of FENG SHUI. So in Asia, mostly invisible to us, real FENG SHUI wars are raging over the success and influence of the various FENG SHUI masters and their schools. Some of the teachings of FENG SHUI therefore make sense in practical application. However, it should not be overlooked that with the technical know-how of a master, one also buys into his ideology, world view, his secret intentions and even his enemies. They all have mystical depth, so to speak. In comparison, Western consultants are downright superficial. According to our many years of experience, these various masters are all “not green”, but each one vies to be the greatest, and the well-known masters are real egomaniacs. FENG SHUI definitely has nothing to do with spiritual development or with the free, independent, completely individual and personal development of the individual! The Chinese (the source of FENG SHUI) are total pragmatists. Anything that promises a practical benefit is done. Our moral concepts do not exist there. The concept of spirituality is a foreign concept to these people. They obviously have no sense of it at all! At least in the past 30 years, since we have had repeated contact with Asians, we have only met one spiritual “East Asian”. All the others were very self-centered and only concerned with their own advantage.
The influence of the spirits
We must go one step further. Anyone who seriously embraces the methods of FENG SHUI and applies them consistently and uncritically here with us must expect difficulties. Not only will you acquire a certain knowledge of interior design, but you will also come into contact with the spirits of the respective masters. If you are rather a naive person and follow the recommendations of a FENG SHUI master well, then it is possible that your living space and your well-being will change quite positively. This will especially be the case if you pay the master well. If he is poorly paid or not courted with the “necessary respect”, then he may very well give you completely wrong advice and you may soon slide into a personal catastrophe! In any case, the people we met had no inhibitions about rewarding and building up or punishing their clients depending on their mood and “good behavior”. And since very few people have enough personal power and insight to see through the nature and consequences of such FENG SHUI advice, it’s a tricky game. If you go to a European architect or interior designer, they will offer you all sorts of things based on European taste. You have to decide for yourself whether you like that. In any case, you are dealing with this architect and his personal taste. The personal needs of the customer are usually taken into account, because they want to satisfy the customer! So you have a good chance that such a western consultation will go well, and if not, just change your consultant. Then the unsuitable consultant may be annoyed because an order has slipped through his fingers, but there will be no repercussions. In contrast, it is unfortunately all too common for Chinese FENG SHUI consultants to take a rejection by a potential client personally, to be offended, which they of course hide behind a friendly smile, and then afterwards try to harm a man or a company that has rejected them with their methods. These things are not common knowledge, at least they are not talked about openly, but unfortunately it is a fact that when you hire a FENG SHUI master, you are also caught up in their belief system from the start, whether you like it or not. Do you understand what I am getting at with these explanations? Every FENG SHUI master is a member of a certain family clan, and also of a secret order, and therefore a member of an ancient belief system. He feels committed only to this tradition. He wants to contribute something to make himself great in order to honor his clan, his order and his ancestors and to increase their power and influence! After all, it is his right to live according to his own façon. But you should definitely be aware of this if you don’t want to lose your own freedom. We foreigners and Europeans have very little insight into their systems, and certainly no influence on what they think! We are never fully recognized by them, unless such a master suspects that one of us is the reincarnation of one of his ancestors. Then, of course, he would do everything in his power to promote this person to become a valuable member of the clan again. It is similar to the nomadic peoples. They have their traditional rules and commandments, according to which they are first and foremost obliged only to their own family, secondly to their clan, and they have no obligations towards all strangers. In this ideological system, it is perfectly okay to cheat strangers in trade or steal from strangers. It’s not against their law. You just mustn’t get caught, because that could bring disgrace on the clan, and that is now forbidden again! So they only come to terms with our law to avoid getting into trouble. Morally, they see it completely differently. That’s nothing unusual. For all nomads and wandering peoples, theft was often the only method of obtaining new values or a wife. This only diminishes when the peoples become settled and the dense population makes other rules and laws necessary. So there is no need to get worked up about this Chinese morality of the FENG SHUI tradition. That’s just the way it is, and you have to come to terms with it if you want to practise or even study FENG SHUI. You will certainly find a lot of Western FENG SHUI consultants here in Germany and Europe who are just a little bit inspired and use some FENG SHUI rules when they work in interior design or landscape design. One could make the rule that the less educated FENG SHUI consultants, who have a great deal of personal sensitivity, are the better ones for us. The highly educated people, on the other hand, who have studied the old tradition intensively and at great expense, are up to their ears in the respective FENG SHUI school. They will represent the interests of this school, which in no way has to coincide with the interests of the customer. These “highly trained people” have certainly spent a lot of money on their qualified training with a well-known master, feel encouraged by their own expenditure of money and study that they are doing the right thing, are always trained one-sidedly, in the interests of the respective school, and their recommendations should really be treated with caution. Only if someone has gone through the high school and yet has still – or again – become his own master, will he advise his clients well in the style he has now developed. There are certainly such western FENG SHUI consultants, but you have to recognize them first! I started studying FENG SHUI superficially 30 years ago. Over the years, I gained more and more experience. Thanks to my many years of intensive training with Indian masters and with a ZEN master from Japan, I can empathize very well with other belief systems. If you can feel and see the subtle energy levels, if you can see the aura and feel how people change just because you address a certain topic, you can also recognize the hidden consequences of a FENG SHUI consultation. I call this “extrapolating”. I receive a suggestion, new information, connect it with an existing system and new energy patterns emerge. These patterns show me how certain people will develop within them, whether this is helpful for them or not. In this respect, I am not dependent on what a FENG SHUI consultant says, but I can feel where his advice and the recommended changes will lead. Every good FENG SHUI consultant is first and foremost a convincing speaker. These people and their recipes are not always easy to see through. On the surface, they make clever, intellectual speeches. Western clients are welcome victims. They have poor intuition and are easily persuaded by clever words that often have no meaningful content at all, but only pretend to be an important insight. Over the past few years, I have witnessed several FENG SHUI consultations with great conviction and complete deceit aimed at ruining the client who had just been advised. It is impossible to say exactly why such destructive advice is given. It may be that the customer has “offended” the master through his behavior – in his perception. And as punishment, he gets a lesson that is supposed to ruin him or his company. It is also possible that a hostile company is preparing a takeover and hires a FENG SHUI master to approach a company in order to give it the wrong advice so that the company gets into trouble and can be taken over more easily. Such hostile takeovers are being prepared today at every conceivable level. And people in the West are largely “naive” and often don’t take it seriously. Yet FENG SHUI has long been a weapon in the repertoire of international businessmen. I personally know several companies that have been ruined by such inadequate advice. But we will never know whether it was deliberate because the master was offended, whether it was on behalf of someone behind the scenes, or whether it was due to the incompetence of the FENG SHUI consultants. With these words I would like to make it clear that FENG SHUI can indeed work, in both a positive and a negative sense. However, the Western client should be very careful whether this is the right way for him to improve his personal success or his quality of life. If a businessman wants to present himself better with his house and his company, then he would probably do better to send his wife on a small FENG SHUI course, get a few books, and later ask his wife to redesign his own house or the foyer of his company with female intuition and a few new skills, than to have an expensive master come and perhaps help him, but perhaps also give him the wrong advice. And that can be really expensive! After a series of negative FENG SHUI consultations, the consequences of which I have had to experience with various clients, I have to assume that these Chinese clans are trying to conquer the western world, or rather the whole world, with their traditional methods. I could not discover any humanistic or even spiritual intentions in this context; on the contrary, it was always and exclusively about the personal power interests of the respective masters, which are always placed above the interests of the clients. The disciples of these masters may be told that they can be assured of a certain positive support as long as they help to increase the honor and wealth of their master. However, if a disciple from a classical school of FENG SHUI no longer serves the master and his clan, perhaps even criticizes him, or goes his own way, then he will be attacked on all levels with the spiritual means of FENG SHUI and of course also by the spirits (the deceased members) of the respective clan. If he is not strong enough, these mental attacks mean illness, ruin and perhaps death. What we consider to be undue influence on other people, or “black magic”, is a normal part of Chinese FENG SHUI masters’ practice. Anyone who finds themselves in such a situation because they did not know everything I am describing here and stumbled carelessly into such a FENG SHUI school should get involved with pranayama and energy training as soon as possible in order to strengthen their personal power against negative influences. They should also acquire an energy pyramid, as this offers optimum protection against such negative forces. FENG SHUI uses mental techniques to achieve its goals, and anyone who engages in it should be fit in these things!
The Indian method of Vastu Shastra – source of Feng Shui
The spiritual differences between India and China
When dealing with a method, you should look at its source, its origin, because the closer you get to the source, the clearer the water becomes! If we want to understand the differences between Chinese culture and Indo-European culture, we need to take a look at their origins. To do this, I need to dig a little deeper. The teachings of the Vastu Shastra are part of the Atharva Veda, the fourth Veda, which is considered to be the oldest document of Indian medicine. The word “Vasthu” means “the place of a house or building” and “Vasthu Shastra” means something like “laws for the construction of a house or building”. I would like to describe the Chinese way of thinking and its achievements as a high-level “mental culture”. It differs from the basic mindset in the Indo-European language area, which culminates in India and which I would like to call “spiritual culture”. This difference will become clear in the following explanations. The origins of the yellow races are to be found in the human culture of Lemuria, an advanced civilization close to nature that extended throughout the entire East Asian region as far as Oceania. Like Atlantis in the western hemisphere, this civilization was exposed to a massive flood catastrophe, combined with serious changes to the land masses. Today’s Chinese culture is around 3000 years old. It began around 1000 BC with some written records still existing today. Of course, there was also a human culture in China before that, the successors of Lemuria, only that no records of it have survived. According to written records, Indian civilization is only 500 years older, but that does not tell the whole story. In reality, Indian civilization began around 8000 BC, i.e. 10,000 years ago. It was the first advanced human civilization to develop after the fall of the Atlantean era. At this time, the colonization of China had sunk to a Stone Age level. This is by no means meant negatively! We have known for a few years that the Neanderthals already had real villages, handcrafted tools and a communal culture. So they must also have had a differentiated language. However, Chinese culture was to develop in a different direction from Indian culture.
With the fall of Atlantis around 10,500 BC, the first migration of peoples began, during which the survivors of Atlantis emigrated to northern Europe and the Mediterranean region. The true Atlantis was located on an archipelago of islands stretching from the Canary Islands to the Azores and Bermuda. While the emigrants founded the first western civilizations in Egypt and Babylon, the living conditions in Europe were so harsh that these peoples continued to migrate and eventually invaded India and Pakistan from the north. They subjugated the Bengali peoples and mixed with them. This gave rise to the peoples who still live on the Indian subcontinent, in Sri Lanka, Burma etc. today. The further we go into South-East Asia, the less influence the Indo-Germanic immigrants have. In South India, spiritual schools emerged whose aim was the knowledge of the world and not the conquest of the world. We can assume that the living conditions there were so favorable that there was no need to fight for survival. The fruit practically grows in your mouth. Nature meant well for people. It was paradise, which originally means “para deus” in ancient Greek = similar to God. In any case, many people there devoted themselves to a spiritual path of knowledge, more so than in other countries. They recognized the transience of all earthly values, and some of them saw through the illusions of Maya. They entered the worlds beyond. This is how South India became the source of the traditions of Kundalini Yoga, the oldest science of human nature. According to YB, however, the source of KY dates back 32,000 years to Lemuria and Atlantis. KY encompasses all the yoga techniques taught by other schools. The different masters of KY specialized in different parts of KY according to their nature, and so over 120 different schools of yoga gradually emerged. In addition to these different schools of yoga, schools of hand-to-hand combat developed in South India, where the special spiritual abilities of the KY and the chakra teachings were used for special warriors. The Indian warrior caste temporarily became the carrier of spiritual development. Around 800 BC, the Buddhist monk Bodhidharma traveled from southern India to Beijing to bring the spiritual achievements of Buddhism to China for the emperor there. Bodhidharma’s journey was actually nothing special, as the followers of Buddhism, like the Christian missionaries 800 years later, were driven by the desire to improve the world. At that time, China was still divided into different countries that were at war with each other. There was an authoritarian state government in which the fine arts were cultivated, but there was no sign of spirituality. Bodhidharma wanted to change this and make the Chinese aware of the spiritual path. At the time he left South India, there were already well-developed schools for various close combat techniques, Kundalini Yoga, Vastu Shastra (Indian Feng Shui) and Buddhism, which was quite new at the time. Bodhidharma was well versed in all of these methods and attempted to accomplish a great work. The Chinese emperor had heard of this sage and had the first Shaolin monastery built in his honor, followed by 20 more monasteries. All these monasteries were informed about Bodhidharma’s methods and were to learn, improve and pass them on. When Bodhidharma himself reached the emperor, he realized that this man would need several more incarnations if he wanted to grasp the spiritual teachings. Even in the monasteries, his teachings were only implemented mechanically and there was no sign of a spiritual path. Bodhidharma was very disappointed. He retreated to the Wudang Mountains in northern China, founded the first Wudang monastery there and chose a few followers who were able to absorb his knowledge. It seems to be typical of the Chinese people that the originally spiritual teachings of Bodhidharma, a mixture of Buddhism, Kundalini Yoga and Vastu Shastra, were not properly understood. Today, every child knows what has become of the Shaolin monasteries: they have become the source of countless Kung Fu monasteries, all of which use mental techniques, but primarily with the aim of increasing their own energy in order to become stronger and better than all the other fighters. The majority of Shaolin work outside the monasteries as bodyguards, mercenaries, paid killers or in the film industry. Only a small proportion remain in the monastery for life and try to improve their spiritual qualities. More precisely, a spiritual path of life consists of 4 stages. First, one is attached and committed to the worldly life. One learns certain worldly educational goals. Next, one decides to undergo spiritual training with a master or in a monastery, that is, in a spiritual school. When you have acquired a certain skill in this, you leave the monastery or the master’s school and try to apply this knowledge spiritually within society, for example as a counselor. When you have attained a certain level of skill in this, you can withdraw from worldly life and go back to the monastery or found your own monastery. One should note this striking difference between China and India: In India, various methods of yoga and meditation have been developed, all of which aim to help individuals perfect themselves and gain higher insights. Anyone who immerses themselves in the world of Kundalini Yoga can of course also become an excellent fighter. But that is by no means the goal of his efforts. The followers of Kundalini Yoga strive to perfect their inner insights. Every KY practitioner seeks to come to terms with himself, his own weaknesses and his karma. KY seeks to eradicate old mistakes in order to purify the soul from the entanglements of karma. The end result of this path will always be an altruistic attitude, seeking union with the divine planes and moving away from the difficulties of worldly life as one matures. Of course, there are also misguided yogis who use their special abilities to pose as gurus and healers and thus take advantage of people. However, it is the aim of the Indian yoga tradition to weed out such people of weak character before they acquire special abilities and take advantage of others. For this reason, it is said in the Yoga Sutras that there are many paths in the beginning, and it takes effort to follow them, but the closer the seeker approaches perfection, the more he will realize that all spiritual schools lead to the same universal goal: To union with the highest divine levels, Brahman itself. Unfortunately, hardly any of the Chinese monks realized this. At least no evidence of this has been handed down to us. Of course, the Tao Te King or the I Ching are outstanding writings and testimonies of a high spiritual level that are second to none. But whoever studies the contents of these two writings will realize that they give us rather excellent descriptions and analyses of human, social behaviour, which are very valuable for understanding society and for our behaviour in society, but these best writings from Chinese sources are not spiritual in the proper sense! They are rather instructions for a conscious and successful way of life. Read my short version of the I Ching with the 3 special I Ching cubes. FENG SHUI and the system used by these masters should not be confused with India. People in India are completely different and have an innate sense of spirituality. It remains to be seen at what level this manifests itself. The majority of Indians practise traditional religion with all its rituals and sacrifices in a simple and naive way. A small number of people practise yoga and meditation in order to develop spiritually. However, all these people are aware of the laws of karma. They know very well the consequences of our actions. They know that there will always be a balance in our universe. For this reason, the Indians, or rather the Hindus and the Sikhs, are a little more careful about what they do than other peoples. I don’t want to gloss over the Indians at all. In India too, there are plenty of criminals who think they can escape the law of karma, who make excuses, but that will do them little good. Indian society as a whole, however, demonstrates a high level of insight into karmic connections and a willingness to develop and promote spirituality and ethics. But with decades of Western influence, especially from England and the USA, interest in spirituality is waning among cultured and Western-oriented Indians. There are certainly spiritual people in all East Asian countries, as there are all over the world. But they rarely leave their region and we don’t even get to see them here. We will also hardly ever see the truly spiritual Chinese here. However, those who set off from distant lands to explore the world also want to conquer it. They don’t just want to pass on their teachings, they want to earn money from them. Those who go to the West to spread their special doctrine of salvation want to be rewarded for it. In the past, Christian missionaries traveled around the world and prepared the ground for colonial wars. They unsettled the natives with their doctrine of salvation and subsequently brought fire, sword and death to the foreign peoples. Today, the Western pharmaceutical industry is conquering foreign countries with the help of Western medicine and the impressive tall tales of bird viruses that crossbreed with human flu in order to wipe out humanity. The pinnacle of the fairytale story is now Covid 19. Allegedly, this virus was released into the wild in China in 2019 or even earlier. I had been wondering for a long time why the Chinese had become so involved with Western medicine when traditional Chinese medicine is obviously more effective and much cheaper. Western methods have been allowed to enter and reproduce very widely in the country. The virus epidemic was then staged and Western pharmaceutical companies eagerly jumped at the chance to make huge profits. While everything is already back to normal in China, the unsustainable conditions and restrictions are only just being poured into new laws here, which will slow down our economy and the whole of humanity for a long time to come. I see these processes as a classic Aikido trick. You tolerate the attack, evade it, and then strike the opponent, who is charging forward with confidence of victory, a blow to the back from which he barely recovers. So now the Asian peoples strike back. They are engaging the West in a self-destructive viral war, and they are sending their Feng Shui masters to the West to open up the West to Eastern teachings, not to do us a favor, but to make gains. So we are in the middle of a great confrontation between Asian and Western European forces that has been going on for 1000 years. And perhaps these differences are even older, dating back to the time of Lemuria and Atlantis. Think about it critically: What genuine spiritual master sees any point in proselytizing the world with his personal philosophy? He knows that everything we experience are only variations of the one great spirit. Where should he go when he is right in the middle of it? If he sees a concrete task to make his contribution to the further development of humanity’s spiritual consciousness, then he will do so. But this is more likely to be the case where he lives than anywhere else on this globe. If he is needed elsewhere, then he will go there too, and he and his teaching will be recognized by his deeds. But with masters who travel all over the world to offer their services for high fees, one should question their intentions and methods very carefully. Yogi Bhajan, the last great master of Kundalini Yoga known in the West, who died in October 2004, was sent to the West by his own masters in 1969. He was to familiarize us with the tradition of Kundalini Yoga. From 1969 until his death, he charged each participant in his courses 60 US$ (46 €) for 3 days and only a few hours in the afternoon. So that was about €15 for 3 hours in the afternoon on 3 days. And for that YB flew halfway around the world. Of course, his organization covered the travel costs. A ridiculous price when the path he was able to offer us could lead to enlightenment in just a few years! His western followers market his teachings for normal western seminar prices. That’s okay too. If the teachings are preserved, the price is justified. Asian Feng Shui masters have been visiting Europe and the USA for several years. For seminars lasting 3 – 6 days, they charge between € 1600 and € 6000 per person. Not bad at all, is it? At least that makes the long journey worthwhile. If this teaching really helps us to progress as human beings and spiritually, then everything would be fine. But if the content of this teaching only serves to make our environment better, with dubious success, then the individual interested party should take a good look at whether they really want to go down this path and what really matters to them.
We need a European “Feng Shui”!
I believe we should learn to consciously shape our environment ourselves. We acquire the natural abilities for this healthy design with the methods of energy training, based on the tradition of classical Kundalini Yoga and Pranayama, with a wide range of information from Western culture and Asian Feng Shui. We then set up an energy pyramid, harmonize our environment, train our sensitive abilities and learn to recognize and correct disturbances. In this way, step by step, we will recognize what we need and what needs to be done, and in the end we can be sure that we are shaping our environment according to our needs and not according to the hidden motives of foreign masters. According to the color theory of one of the great FENG SHUI masters, which we have taken a closer look at, beneficial and inhibiting colors are calculated for each room according to the Chinese birth numerology. The room is therefore tailored to its user. This means that people with very different horoscopes will have considerable differences between the individual members of a family! Who has the same or a similar horoscope to their parents or children? All other calculations as to which positions and wind directions are favorable or not in an apartment or house can also turn out quite differently for all family members according to this system. In one example, the master in a bank had planned a different entrance for East people than for West people, etc., which then had to be taken into account. The entrance from the house (= mouth) is then determined to the exact degree, other systems are consulted for control etc. etc. The more this master developed his concept, the more confused and uncertain the bank managers concerned became. They wondered how all this was to be implemented! Should customers be assigned the different entrances through which they could enter the bank? For me, one thing was particularly clear from this situation: this FENG SHUI master had managed to influence everyone involved in a very targeted way in a very short space of time. There was a feeling that it was no longer possible to do business successfully without the master’s expert help! He had the group pretty well under control. They felt dependent on him, and that was probably the intention. When I advise people or companies, I try to lead my clients to a good result in the most direct way. I want my clients to understand what I’m talking about, to understand my recommendations and to be able to make their own decisions to improve their company in the future. That is what I mean by good, serious advice. I dislike methods that make the client dependent on the consultant. My aim is for people to be independent and not dependent on masters and their methods. The methods of Vasthu Shastra are not exactly easy to follow either. The Indians know a kind of step pyramid that is covered with gold foil. Similar to our modern energy pyramid (double pyramid), it is supposed to harmonize a house. The whole house is divided into different zones according to the pattern of a yogi sitting in a yoga seat in the house. Then the vibrations of the different rooms are determined, and finally this step pyramid is to be set up in accordance with the stars and the moon at a certain time. The whole system is so complicated that a master is needed to carry out the measurements and to determine the astrologically correct time at which this pyramid or other magical and ritual objects may or must be erected. So once again the great master is needed. Nothing works without him, at least not with these methods. No wonder that this very old, traditional method has not yet caught on in the West.
When I think of it all, you can completely destroy yourself before you’ve even found a place to sleep or work! The decisive things happen in our consciousness (if we have one) and our outside world is shaped by our mind, isn’t it? We are not a product of our environment, but our environment is a product of our thoughts and feelings! We shape this world according to our consciousness! The aim should be to improve our awareness, train our attention and strengthen our personal power. Then we will create a good place to sleep and work in every home and set ourselves up in a way that makes life fun and builds us up instead of making us more and more insecure through a complicated, pseudo-scientific method. From today, please focus on your personal development. Train yourself. Strengthen your personal power with energy training and pranayama. Harmonize your environment with an energy pyramid. Everything else will fall into place!
D. Harald & Tobias O. R. Alke
Further reading on FENG SHUI:
Art, magic and feng shui with precious crystals / Horus Sensitivity Games / I Ching, the dice game of the gods
Further reading on energy training and pranayama:
Energytraining Volume 1 / Energytraining Volume 2
The stages of pranayama
Further literature on the Horus energy pyramids:
The Pyramid Man
