Tao Te Ching
"The Way of the Action of the Soul"
(translation by Sheets/Tovey)

PURCHASE: The Way of the Action of the Soul + 2CDs

The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese document purportedly written about 2500 years ago. It is an important piece of Taoist literature which has been translated by many different people because of its age and spiritual nature. It is extensively studied throughout the world in a variety of translations.

The author of the Tao Te Ching is "Lao Tzu" which means "the grand old master." Hence, the author's birth name is not known, and there is no recorded history of the author's life. The document is typically divided into eighty-one chapters and contains more than 5,000 Chinese characters.

Alan Sheets and Barbara Tovey made an unexpected correlation between the Tao Te Ching and the nine soultype families; they discovered that the Tao Te Ching was written about the nine soultypes. Alan and Barbara discovered that by organizing the Tao Te Ching according to the table below, every ninth chapter addresses the nature of the same soultype, creating nine groups of nine chapters (see chart).

	Tao Te Ching Chapters
SoulType 1	1	10	19	28	37	46	55	64	73
SoulType 2	2	11	20	29	38	47	56	65	74
SoulType 3	3	12	21	30	39	48	57	66	75
SoulType 4	4	13	22	31	40	49	58	67	76
SoulType 5	5	14	23	32	41	50	59	68	77
SoulType 6	6	15	24	33	42	51	60	69	78
SoulType 7	7	16	25	34	43	52	61	70	79
SoulType 8	8	17	26	35	44	53	62	71	80
SoulType 9	9	18	27	36	45	54	63	72	81
New Equations is learned through personal experience. The Tao Te Ching is very much the same. Do not simply try to make sense out of the words. Instead, click on the links for each chapter, and listen to Alan and Barbara read that chapter. Let your body absorb the words. This experience will give you more of a body-based sense for the nine human soul families.

The Tao Te Ching represents the first historical writing found by Alan and Barbara that directly addresses the soultype families. Until their discovery, Alan and Barbara were solely responsible for documentation about this subject.

Excited about their finding, Alan and Barbara have made an entirely new translation of the Tao Te Ching, because it cannot be effectively understood without awareness of the differences between the nine soul families. Alan and Barbara believe that the Tao Te Ching is specifically a manual to teach people of each of the nine soul families how to express the soul. It teaches people both where they need to go to live from soul, and the pitfalls that get in the way.

Alan and Barbara did not need to rewrite, reinterpret, or intuit meaning as they worked on their translation. Of the possible definitions for each Chinese character, they chose the definition that best communicated insight about the soultype family being addressed. They made minor grammatical adjustments to account for the shift from the Chinese way of expressing ideas to the English language style.

Although Alan and Barbara are not scholars of Chinese literature or Taoism, they have extensive knowledge of the unique nature of soul-to-soul connections with people from each soultype family. This gave them a foundation to add context that had not been previously integrated into the Tao Te Ching translations. The soultype-specific nuances bring each chapter alive. This new translation forms a powerful spiritual document that has a new flavor.