Introduction to the Kala Cleansing Rite

October 15, 1949

For Huna Research Associates
Covering the experimental approach to the use of Huna in HUNA and related religious and psychological fields.
From Max Freedom Long
P.O. Box 2867, Hollywood Station, Los Angeles 28, California, U.S.A.

AMIDST YEOWLS OF SORROW on the part of CIGBO, the work of cutting out the dead wood on the HRA lists has begun. Cigbo mourns each lost “Aunty” or “Uncle” AND TRIES HIS BEST to hide the file cards of friends who are unheard from for so long a time that it is evident that their interest has failed in the work.

There are several resting places provided on the very steep trail one follows if climbing on foot out of the Grand Canyon, and last month, watching climbers through my glasses, I noticed that some hardly paused at all the whole way up. Others rested a long time at each wide place. A girl was painfully tugging a man up the last few turns. Two women and a man turned around after making the start and went back to wait for mules.

In our work to try to restore for Humanity and ourselves the ancient lore of the kahunas, we make the climb toward the goal in much the same way. HRAs cannot be blamed for the pace they set or do not set for themselves. On the contrary, each one who makes a start deserves praise and admiration. The majority remain on the rim watching, as I did, through glasses and with Olympian detachment. They, like myself, will probably never know what was discovered in themselves of strength or weakness by the few who took the trail – and the sad part is that they may never realize that a great experience was missed.

The work we have undertaken is, I suppose, for the few instead of the many. Evolution begins to appear to be for the individual rather than for the masses and on the level of the Aunihipili, almost no evolution at all if bodily structure is the criterion.

In fact, the physical body of man shows definite evidence of growing backwards. Our grandparents were physically stronger on their average than we on ours. And in mentality, they were as good and perhaps much better. Insanity ratios are much higher with us.

Because we can build new ideas on old ones, knowledge increases. With one tool or formula perfected, we can build still another. The mental capacity of the builder remains at the same level. Aristotle would have stood with the best of today had he lived at this time, perhaps higher than some of our best.

Hidden deep within each of us is a strange desire to teach and to change the world for the better as we see it. The dim light of glory never fades around the memory of the ones who have responded most fully to that desire and urge. They have been our great missionaries and our leaders of hopeless causes. They have suffered for teaching that the Earth was round or that popular beliefs might be wrong.

The much loved writer, Will Levington Comfort, pondered long over the question as to whether it was a man’s duty to try to “save the world.” In the end he decided that it was not. The greatest service was to be rendered by setting an example. In other words, instead of preaching to the other fellow, or trying to teach him something that might not be correct at all, the first duty is to live up to the teaching oneself. Comfort wrote, “If I ever become a teacher, I will tell you.” He never announced that he was ready to teach. In fact, he seems to have decided, in the end, that the world was not worth saving and that the effort to become worthy to be a teacher was futile.

On the physical level, mutations undoubtedly continue slowly to change us so that we fit better the conditions around us. But on what we may call the mental or moral level (of the Auhane and Aumakua, perhaps), there is painfully little reason to think that we are evolving either as a whole or as individuals. We are just as greedy and cruel and kind and unselfish as other men have been as far as recorded history can take us back. [Kahuna Lani: This was before the Psychometric Analysis studies of Oscar Brunler taught us differently. It was only then that we came to an understanding of “Evolutionary Consciousness”, that the Created World, and all life, is like a school. Each time there is a graduation, a new soul is brought up from the animal kingdom. Like high schools, they never seem to mature. That is because of the best souls graduating!] Our saints and great moral leaders are no better or wiser than they were centuries earlier. Whether justified or not, what we did to men, women and children on both sides of the last war indicate no mass progress toward the highest ideals of kindness propounded by the ancient kahunas and by all the later Teachers.

I once knew a man who had spent half his life in the pulpit and in holy orders. He had given up. In his cups one day he confided to a friend, “They don’t want to be saved. All they want is to be let alone – and now that’s the way I feel, too.”

So, we can help each other by sharing our information and our inspirations, but heaven help us [as] we cannot, must not and dare not try to force our version of some “salvation” on our friends or even our enemies. And by the same token, we are fully justified in defending ourselves against such coercion aimed in our direction.

The point is that in our small organization as HRAs, we must avoid as the plague any inclination to try to hold those who do not wish to be held, or to force Huna on those who do not want it. Another thing, we must do all in our power to keep our ideas and conclusions from becoming frozen into dogmas. We are the one group, so far as I know, which is not grinding its own ax with all the strength it has. We are unique in having no “teaching” to limit or hinder our experimental approach to the Huna we are examining with what logic and caution we can muster. We must keep our HRA doors open for those who wish to come in and for those who wish to go out – and this applies to information and materials. If we can do this, and if we as individuals will content ourselves with trying to demonstrate Huna principles in ourselves and for the aid of others, instead of preaching without practice, we will be safe.

The most amazing ideal in the whole of Huna, when looked at in the light of possible inner growth, is that of learning and growing into the state of being “UTTERLY TRUSTWORTHY” as the Aumakuas are supposed to be. This is to be trustworthy, first of all, in that we do not try to force our wills or beliefs or opinions on others. The greatest of the divine gifts seems to have been FREE WILL on the level of the Auhane and Aumakua, even if still subject to coercion on the Aunihipili level by physical conditions, necessities and obligations.

VOLUNTEERS are requested to take part in a series of special telepathic healing efforts. If you feel that you can, send in your name at once. Intensive healing efforts will be directed at set times daily or between times, for a period of a week. The emergency case awaiting this combined treatment may show us whether or not the often suggested method of several concentrating on a single one, is particularly beneficial. Mimeo instructions will be sent to each volunteer. Later a report on the experiment will be given in the bulletins. No matter what method of healing you are accustomed to using, you are invited to take part.

SUGGESTIONS FROM SEVERAL HRAs have been made from time to time that I “demonstrate” a bountiful supply of funds to keep Cigbo’s box overflowing, or even to furnish us with a great and beautiful retreat and center in mountains or desert. In answer I have said that we have demonstrated very well indeed, and from the very first of our work as HRAs. Often the old cigar box has been empty and the stamps low and paper about gone, but there was never any urgency in our needs and, miraculously enough, there has always come a gift or an unusual number of letters with contributions before any need or bill or installment on our equipment for producing the bulletins became pressing. I am convinced that our work is under Guidance and that what we need will arrive when needed. As to the great center or retreat, we are not ready for that yet. But when and if we make ourselves ready, I am sure it will come.

SPEAKING OF “DEMONSTRATIONS“, I have had several letters this last few months bearing on the fact that often a healing of body or conditions is not permanent – that the original difficulty has returned. A letter from Australian HRAs gave news of the strange and magical healings that a few had as a result of holding the ancient clay prayer bowl in the museum while invoking the Aumakua and asking healing. This late news was to the effect that the healings were not quite complete in two cases or that the healed condition was not entirely permanent.

This was a matter well known to the kahunas. They ordered the patients to try their best not to remember the condition once it had been corrected, or to ask prayerfully for forgiveness should it be accidentally recalled. They said that the thing that had caused the trouble and which had been removed by the kala or cleansing, was only too easy to bring back to life in the Aunihipili if great care was not exerted.

I have been, and still am, gathering from various sources data on the healing done in our Christian churches. The same trouble is found there and in an enlarged form. In all such healing work to come under my direct observation, the one to be healed was put through an intensive period of revival preparation, with usually three days or more of afternoon and evening attendance at long meetings. They witnessed the healing of others and arrived at a high state of religious exaltation – this being perfectly legitimate and good, but very hard to hold when returning to ordinary daily rounds of activity. The healer himself, usually commanding the “devil” of illness to come out of the patient, and inadvertently using strong mesmeric (with mana) powers and suggestion, obtained spectacular results in many cases. What seems to keep this from being the standard healing method is the painfully high average of relapses. “George” Aunihipili is the champion backslider.

THE KALA OR CLEANSING RITE

Study unit: Group or Individual Read page 395 of SSBM – The KALA or Cleansing Rite – Its Use in Huna and in Religions.

It has been asked whether or not a ritual cleansing, as of the pollution of sins, should be undertaken before making our group or individual prayer-actions in the Huna way.

One active new group has been asking forgiveness and cleansing as a beginning to group experiments in healing. The question as to the best way to do this was asked of me by letter. The group leader wanted also to know whether ki (or ti) leaves, such as were used by the Chief in the fire-walking magic (see FIRE-WALKING FROM THE INSIDE by HRA Charles Kenn, pages 17 and 32, also illustrations of these leaves in use as a wand in Figure 3 and as markers of the “four corners” in foreground of Figure 4, also other pages) could be had for experimental purposes, or were necessary.

In my opinion the actual ritual or the materials, be they ki leaves or sprinkled water, make little difference. If they did, then cleansing from the results of “sin” would have to be [a] chemical action, which is most doubtful.

In Huna, sin is a hurt done [to] another. To be cleansed of the guilt sense resulting from this form of action, amends must be made to the one hurt. Or, if the hurt is too long back to allow amends, a substitute may be found in doing a balancing amount of helpful deeds to others, keeping in mind (to cause the deeds to act as a physical stimulus for the Aunihipili) the purpose of the good deeds.

In religion there is a mixing of the general ideas concerning cleansing rites for sin and for infections. Check your Bible, Leviticus XIV, where an excellent system for the times was laid out as a “Law” by the “EVER-LIVING” through Moses. Clothing and all things soiled or discolored by contact with a diseased person were burned or washed or otherwise handled to keep the infection from spreading. (Amazingly good rules even in the light of modern knowledge of infections.) The priests were to examine all patients betimes and when they were fit to come back into the tribal life, they were then cleansed before the altar with the sacrifice of living creatures and the washings and sprinklings of the day… Of course, prayers were at the time offered as a part of the ritual.

It does not appear that sin was considered the necessary cause of illness or disease, but there must have been a tradition covering the relation of sickness and guilt, judging from the things done in the cleansing rites.

In Christianity, the concepts seemed to have separated to a large extent and the old rituals with the sacrifices and washings dropped. The rite of baptismal washing or sprinkling is connected in the New Testament with the vague tradition of “living water.” In the Old Testament (cited above) rituals, the sacrifice of one of two clean fowls was done “over living water” and the blood and “living water” then sprinkled on the infected person and on the other fowl, the latter then being released in a way suggesting the use of the scapegoat.

Huna has left its ideas in still identifiable form in most old religions. “Living” water is very poorly described in the Bible, although it is mentioned in such a way that it is to be seen that it was, in a secret way, more than “running” water. In Jeremiah, 11-13 we read, Said the Ever-living “For my people twice did evil to Me. They forsook the Spring of Living. Water, to dig for themselves wells, broken wells which contain no water!” (Ferrar Fenton’s translation.)

Huna used “water” for the secret symbol of mana of any grade. While ordinary water was sometimes charged with low mana from the hands and used as a means of transferring force to one being treated, the main use for water was to act as a physical stimulus in washing the patient and giving him the suggestion that he was being cleansed of his guilts and of the disease itself.

While water is blessed and made into “Holy” water in the older Christian rituals before ever being used in the various rites, one can see in the later Bible records that the concept had cleared and the symbol of a cleansing force had more or less replaced the idea of water itself, blessed or unblessed to make it “holy” or “living.”

The sprinkling with blood and the idea of being “washed in the blood of the Lamb as a cleansing from sin” seems not to have come from the ancient Huna, but from some other source. (Nothing in the roots of the word for blood, ko`ko indicate a symbolic cover-up for mana or other elements important to Huna. The root, ko, has several meanings, such as to “accomplish, to beget or to conceive”, but no meaning to indicate the belief that blood was any more the repository of mana or “life force” than bone or muscle.)

We can see that if no chemical action of leaves, water or blood can change a guilt fixation, their only possible use would be as a physical stimulus in a cleansing rite.

In the last analysis, as we clear our feet of the mire of accumulated garblings and misconceptions of the long centuries, our consciousness and the actions of our minds are what must be used in all efforts to “cleanse.” The return is to simplicity.

But such a return can only be made when there is a simple and clear understanding of the matters involved. Getting rid of a guilt is a simple matter of returning the horse we have stolen and making amends. Or, if it is a fixation caused by traumatic injuries dating back to childhood, religious or moral teachings, or to later “shock” causes, it is simply a problem of using actions of mind and physical stimuli to drain off the fixations – although the actual work of the locating and draining off is, unfortunately, not at all simple.

After making amends for hurts done others, or doing good deeds without thought of reward, or the penance of fasting etc., and after sternly putting away hates and resentments, a ritual for cleansing may be very good to aid the Aunihipili to get free of its more fixed guilt senses. If we have been conditioned to use prayer, we may be able to pray for forgiveness as the final act of the ritual which has to begin with the thing mentioned above, if it is to be effectual to a marked degree. For some, the confessional would be a help. Or, if one could impress his Aunihipili despite his civilized surroundings, the use of the ki leaves and water might help. 

LETTERS AND COMMENTS ON EXPERIMENTS

From New England comes one of the reports on the effort to get from the Aunihipili, by means of the pendulum, information as to its ideas on Huna healing.

“Thank you for working on the eye condition via the TMHG. In connection with that I have asked some questions with the pendulum:

1. Is the Aka path for mana, from Aunihipili to Aumakua open? (Ans.) Yes.
2. Have we, Auhane and Aunihipili, a complex which prevents mana going to Aumakua for healing? (Ans.) No.
3. Is it because Auhane and Aunihipili have not learned to handle the mana in our body in the right way, that we have as yet been unable to correct the eye trouble? (Ans.) Yes.”

A Colorado HRA writes,”It seems almost uncanny the way the pendulum responds to one’s questions, and I find that the answers are quite accurate. I feel that I am making wonderful contact with my Aumakua and am taking it for granted that when I am desiring Guidance in various ways, and when I sense that flow of vital force or tingling sensation from head to foot, there is no doubt but that the correct solution to the problem at hand has been reached. If others are speaking and I sense that they have the right solution, I get the same tingling … The general purpose prayer (the Ho’ohiki given by HRA Charles Kenn and commented on by HRA Theodore Kelsey) proves to be just what I seemed to feel I needed. It vitalizes me so that I have to use it with care on retiring or I remain awake until the wee hours in the morning. I think it was such an effort for me to memorize it that it impressed my subconscious mind so thoroughly that it is praying without ceasing as you might say … I am so grateful for all this wonderful knowledge and the help given me. I am far from being the wreck I was when you started helping me.” (Note: The prayer may be used in English or Hawaiian as wished. The important part is to know the meaning of the words. While the exact sounds of the Hawaiian words might have some particular effect, the thought-forms of the thoughts in the prayer are what go to the Aumakua along the aka thread of connection from the Aunihipili. This prayer and the “Little Prayer” given in earlier bulletins have both had recent praise for the results obtained through their use.

HRA Ernest Bateman is still convinced that he is in more or less direct contact with his Aumakua via the pendulum. Whether correct or not, the things he gets are interesting to consider. He recently took up the question of whether or not the Aumakua was made up of a male-female combination which was a UNIT in the union and interblending of their two aka bodies, but which allowed them to continue to hold separate identities – and perhaps to make a magical use of the creative powers of the two sexes in changing the future in answer to our prayer-actions. In pondering over the matter, HRA Bateman came to a puzzle and concluded, “The three souls of man, called a triune being, would be four souls if the Aumakua was made up of two, a male and a female. This seeming inconsistency my Aumakua quickly cleared up, and in no uncertain manner, as follows: (Note: It is always safe to remember the danger of the thoughts we hold coloring the communications coming through us in any psychic way, mediumistic or via pendulum.)

1. My Aumakua is male.
2. Aumakuas are of both sexes. They are never interblended as to aka bodies and consciousness as one bi-sexed.
3. That women have male Aumakuas, sometimes. That men sometimes have 2 female Aumakuas.
4. That there are the same degrees (variations?) of intelligence, ability and mentality amongst the Aumakuas as individuals, as amongst us of the here-living levels.
5. That female Aumakuas are as intelligent and capable as the male.
6. That still higher spirits on still higher planes are of both sexes.
7. That the mutual attraction of opposite sexes for the purpose of reproduction in the here-living is non-existent in the there-living. The there-living, with few exceptions, pair off with mutual love, and a more rapid development in preparation for advancing to a higher spiritual plane, as the attraction for each other. The few exceptions work alone.
8. That the Aumakua’s soul mate often, but not always, joins in consultations with him or her over requests and questions from their here-living charges.
9. That each Aumakua is strictly on his or her own, and that it is optional with them as to calling in a member of the opposite sex for consultation on a problem.”

Mr. Bateman also reports that several HRAs have sent in the specified kind of writing to be used to make the experimental checks, via the pendulum and this source of information, on whether or not they have complexes hindering their progress toward health or prosperity or happiness. No very definite results were reported at the time of writing.

Different HRAs have different experiences with the pendulum, all very important to keep in mind as we collect information. One finds that when she collects a surcharge of mana and uses the pendulum, she feels a cold spot form on the top of her head and sometimes between her eyes. One wonders if the mana flow is going from these places, and if they are related to the glands assigned by Theosophy to various psychic functions.

My own finding that when I was very tired, my pendulum’s normal swing was weaker, does not check with this. “Last night at bedtime I was utterly exhausted and very sleepy. I used the pendulum, thinking it would be very weak, and it was very strong, swinging straight out, as it went around. Queer.

I mention it for that reason. Will some other HRAs make a comparative test and report in on the results? Perhaps we measure something other than the ordinary mana charge.

A question came up as to just what the Chief saw when he watched the pile of wood with stones on top, standing ready to be lighted in the morning for the fire-walking. (See pages 37 and 38 of the Kenn report.) The short phrase, ” …the spirit-forms of the deities dancing upon the (cold) stones (by night)” gives us nothing definite. If they were Aumakuas or the step higher, the Akua Aumakuas, would they have assumed definite form for the dance? Probably not human form, but perhaps. An HRA writes of this, “In Theosophy, the Atma, Buddhi, and Higher Manas are called Arupa, which means “without form.” HRA William B., it will be remembered, saw in a vivid dream or vision, a dark man and blond woman and was impressed that these were the forms used by his Aumakua pair when in the flesh. How little we know and how little we can test of the mass of “teachings” and speculative material which fills our books. I am constantly getting letters (not from HRAs) telling me exactly how everything is and exactly where the kahunas were wrong in their beliefs – but with never a bit of proof to back up their contentions. Mostly guesses and jargon. Always …

ALWAYS QUESTION EVERY AUTHORITY regardless …

[Kahuna Lani: This was just at the second beginning of Huna and yet many of our attitudes and dogmas had already been discovered. It would take the Psychometric Analysis studies by Kahuna Oscar Brunler and Kahuna Nui Max Freedom Long to eventually discover that there is no male or female entity at all, but a single entity is torn in half in its passage in the plant kingdom, and the two selves continue to develop independently as animals and then humans until they are reunited and “Graduate” into a single new Aumakua. It would not be until our discovery of “Evolutionary Consciousness” that the entire Created World and all its seriousness and follies, its tragedy and comedy would open before us. And because of our theology, our dark times of the soul made lighter, and our wonderful times increased in their wonder — and we understand, finally, because of our dogmatic doctrine of Evo-Con, that we are never alone again.]