Taoist masters have used total darkness as part of their training for centuries. In this clip from his third London Real appearance, recorded in late 2018, Master Mantak Chia tells Brian Rose why: he believes a week in a completely dark room changes the chemistry of the brain and produces the same kind of experience that people chase with psychedelics.
Chia’s English is idiosyncratic and the ideas are unusual, so here is a clear guide to what he says, followed by the full transcript.
▶ Watch the full episode: Mantak Chia – Unleash Your Sexual Energy
The dark room formula
Chia describes the dark room as something every Taoist master had to go through. The idea is simple: go into a space so dark that you cannot see anything, and stay there. When he researched it, he says, the explanation he arrived at was hormonal. Darkness drives the body to produce more melatonin, the hormone we normally make at night.
His theory goes further. As melatonin builds up over several days, he says, the body starts converting it into stronger compounds, first 5-MeO-DMT and then DMT, the substances “that the West discovered” in psychedelic plants.
Day by day
When Brian asks how long it takes, Chia’s answer is one week of total darkness, with meals and everything else happening in the dark room. He links it to everyday sleep: his own master taught him to cover his eyes and use earplugs at night, so the body keeps making melatonin.
In the dark room, he says, the mind calms down and the body produces far more melatonin than usual. By the second or third day people begin to see colours and visions. Later, he says, comes a feeling of leaving the body. That is why the practice has to be trained and controlled, so people learn to go out and come back.
Why he avoids psychedelics
Brian has drunk ayahuasca in Costa Rica, and he asks whether Chia has tried magic mushrooms. Chia says no. His master didn’t want him to, and Taoism, he says, already went down that road thousands of years ago.
He tells the story of early Taoist alchemists who took mercury and other metals in an attempt to find an elixir of life, and how many were poisoned. His view of psychedelic drugs is similar: they push the body close to death, and the visions are the body’s response to that shock. The Taoists, he says, eventually turned to “internal” practice instead, producing these states through the body rather than draining it with outside substances.
What to take from it
This clip is best read as an insight into Taoist practice, not as established science. The link Chia draws between melatonin and the body making its own DMT is his own theory and has not been demonstrated in research. What does come across is a consistent philosophy: whatever people look for outside themselves, he believes, can be cultivated from within, and slowly.
This clip reflects Mantak Chia’s own beliefs and practice. It is not medical advice. Extended darkness retreats should not be attempted without proper guidance.
Who is Master Mantak Chia?
Mantak Chia is a Thai-born Taoist master, teacher and author, and the founder of the Universal Healing Tao system. He has written dozens of books on Taoist practices, including qigong, meditation and sexual energy cultivation, and runs the Tao Garden retreat in northern Thailand.
This was his third appearance on London Real. In the full episode, he and Brian Rose go deeper into Taoist philosophy, dark room practice, nutrition and fasting, and his favourite subject: sex and sexual energy. You can also watch another popular clip: Master Mantak Chia – Sexual Exercises For Men.
See everything Mantak Chia has done with London Real on his guest page: Master Mantak Chia on London Real.
More on London Real
Transcript
Transcript: Master Mantak Chia – The Taoist Dark Room And The “Natural DMT” Theory Explained
0:00 Mantak Chia: The dark room is something all the masters have to go through. The formula in the Tao is that you go into the dark until you cannot see anything at all.
0:15 Mantak Chia: When I did the research, it is the same thing as melatonin and serotonin, and 5-MeO and DMT. That is what the West discovered: DMT and 5-MeO. All the drugs are producing this.
0:37 Brian Rose: In the dark? Because psychedelic drugs produce the DMT.
0:42 Mantak Chia: Yes. So people take it and it signals the body.
0:46 Brian Rose: I’ve just been to Costa Rica and drank ayahuasca.
0:51 Mantak Chia: Yes, you’ve had that experience. So that is the whole key.
1:01 Mantak Chia: Now, in the Tao, they went through all these drugs before. [unclear] And one major portion was mercury. They took the mercury, and metals and precious stones, and they dissolved them so they could take them. But no matter what they did, they were still poisoned.
1:48 Mantak Chia: When you take it, it’s like taking poison. The body produces a fighting effect and stimulates a death hormone at the top of the head, and that is the DMT. So the DMT people experience when they take the drugs is the person producing it, and they see visions, they see so many things. It’s the same with magic mushrooms. The mushroom is poison, but it is magic because it doesn’t kill you right away. It makes you close to death and stimulates the DMT stored in the pineal gland.
2:55 Mantak Chia: So we have the death hormone. 5-MeO, you see colours, you see visions, you walk through the wall. And the DMT makes you feel a separation.
3:06 Brian Rose: So you know a lot about psychedelics.
3:08 Mantak Chia: Yes, because that is my study and my expertise. I have done these things for many, many years, and I compare them.
3:20 Brian Rose: So have you experimented with magic mushrooms?
3:22 Mantak Chia: No, no. My master wanted me to go the way of the Tao, and the Tao has already gone through this for many thousands of years. Finally they said no, we have to return to the internal. You want to make it with your internal sources, inside the human being. And in the dark room you are producing it, you’re not draining it. That is the whole key.
3:57 Brian Rose: So the masters used to go through this dark room as part of their training, and that’s where you got the idea to teach other people to do it. How does it work? How long do you need to be in the dark?
4:08 Mantak Chia: One week, totally dark. You eat everything in the dark room. But the whole key is to understand that when we go to sleep at night, my master always said: cover your eyes and put in earplugs, so it’s dark. When it’s dark, the body produces melatonin. In the morning, the melatonin you produced at night turns to serotonin.
4:44 Mantak Chia: But when you go into the dark, calm your mind, don’t speak and calm everything down, the body produces more melatonin: 5 milligrams, 10, 20, 25 milligrams. When the melatonin reaches 25 milligrams, now we have enough, because it’s the same chain. It splits into 5-MeO.
5:22 Mantak Chia: So on the second or third day you have enough melatonin, because you’re not converting it into serotonin, and it produces 5-MeO. You see colours, you see visions, you may see past lives. Very strong. And when you stay longer, it turns into DMT. Now you’re sitting there and you feel something come out of your body. That is what we call the soul wanting to leave the body.
6:15 Mantak Chia: So now we have to control it. We practise in the first, second and third levels so the soul becomes stronger, and it knows how to get out and come back.
