Advanced Mana Techniques

November 1, 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.

THE NEWS HERE AT THE STUDY

[The news] for the past two weeks covers nothing of great importance in so far as our Huna experimental work is concerned. The reports of various experiments have been good, and an unusual number of delightful letters have arrived. To answer these and still keep ahead so that the bulletins could come out on time, I made up the first general interest letter planned to last a month instead of a week. Most of you will have had a copy in reply to your notes, letters or contributions to Cigbo’s box by now, as nearly all of you have written during the past two weeks.

Ten of the 92 HRAs who seemed to have lost interest and who were notified that they had been placed on the “inactive” list, have warmed my heart by hastening to write in to explain their long silence. I wish I could find space to pass on to the rest of you the many dramatic accounts that come in from HRAs who have been through experiences of all sorts, happy and otherwise. Through all the accounts runs a bright thread of courage and faith.

I believe that I am beginning to notice that runs of bad luck which have defied our best efforts to stop or correct, belong to a special cycle or classification. Much of the trouble has had its origin in the past, before the efforts to make use of Huna were begun.

There was the case of a lease taken on a building about two years ago. It led to complications and these did not respond to Huna efforts. Last week the lease was allowed to lapse and the heavy loss accepted. There have been cases of illness in which two dated back some years, and which failed to respond – ending with operations (which, happily, were very successful and were followed by unusually fast recovery).

One can see in the Huna philosophy indications that events that have had their ultimate outcomes crystallized in the future are hardest to work over for the better. We can be sure that the need in these cases would be for an expert in the use of kahuna methods, and that our uncertain efforts have not been good enough.

What is less easy to understand is the fact that small troubles seem to develop to go along with the large ones. Accidents happen and seem to have had no beginning in the past, or there are sudden illnesses or losses. Perhaps the best way to look at these is that with which the kahunas seem to have viewed the ordinary small events in their daily lives – seeing in them the same thing as events in the lives of animals around them, or as the “accidents” of storm or volcanic eruptions, or the sweep of some disease.

The “law” of the physical level of life, which includes our own bodies, our environment and even our Aunihipili (as a fellow of the selves of all other animals), seems to be the “law of accidents” or chance. The level of the Auhane seems tied in through the Aunihipilis and the physical bodies to a great extent. Perhaps only the Aumakuas can be counted free (or relatively free) of this seeming disorderly jumbling of events. Perhaps it, alone, can bring order.

In writing about the welter of theories that sound good, but which will not hold water, one of the HRAs recently reminded me of H. L. Mencken’s famous words, “… entirely logical, very simple – and wrong.” All of our speculations, like those of Adam, Moses and modern thinkers, are made up of the materials with which we are familiar on the physical and mental levels of life. To these materials we try to add things which we GUESS to be part and parcel of the materials of the next higher level, or of levels running on up to some final Source.

In Huna we have a philosophy which is unique in that it refuses to take the GUESSES as anything more than guesses. Huna is alone in having no revelations or teachings that must be swallowed with the nose held and without pausing to inspect or taste the dose. The kahunas apparently knew, back in the days when they were building a language around their concepts to preserve them, that as long as we who are Auhanes cannot see things through the eyes and minds of the Aumakuas, we simply cannot know and understand in full detail the answers to what happens all around us in living.

We do well to keep these things in mind as we push ahead with our tests of the working part of Huna – the down to earth practical part which is but little rested on the speculative nature of the Aumakuas and still higher Beings. Cold comfort though it be for those of us who have to face problems beyond our power to meet, it is less painful to admit that we simply do not know than to whisper, “Karma!” and sink back into the mire of black depression from which we envision no escape unless at the end of countless lives to come.

And, by the same token, we are also much more fortunate than those who mutter, “It is God’s will,” and go moaning away wondering how a kind and just God could bring such things upon those who love and worship Him. Perhaps for good measure, the torment of seeing a wicked man “flourish as the green bay tree” across the road, is added to the overflowing measure of woe.

Little wonder that the believers in karma have become so hopeless or that the Christian of twenty centuries has tried to content himself with his lot while endeavoring to keep eyes and hopes turned toward the promised reward of heaven. (Of course, taking care to avoid hell if possible, for Origen, in his writings, explained that hell was invented by the priests as a special motivation on the heavenly journey.)

At this point, several HRAs will look at me anxiously and ask whether there be any SPIRITUALITY at all left for us in Huna, so I hasten to say that, in my opinion, there is as much or more than will be found in any other system. To be good as we see “good” is indeed to be spiritual. To make contact with the Higher Beings and get from them impressions that we feel come from touching the perfect and abstract REALITY – this is as “spiritual” a thing as we can know or experience. Or call this experience a part of MYSTICISM if you prefer. Huna does not lack a name for that great and shining abstraction we call “TRUTH.” The “REALIZATION” of Zen is nothing different in its “truth” when it is touched. Contact the Aumakua with the help of the Aunihipili and you may touch the TRUTH or experience REALIZATION, or samadi. No matter which gate you enter, the thing that you will find within is always what the kahunas called “THE LIGHT.” This symbol word includes all. And it excludes darkness.

MANA AS A TOOL IN EXPERIMENTS

A MENTION WAS MADE recently in a bulletin of the practice of a rather new school of healers who were “beaming vital force” and sending it to the base of the skull of a patient to cause [the] skull and neck to move into normal relation in so far as the joints are concerned.

So far as I have been able to learn, there are three people who have been able to learn to cause an adjustment in this way.

IF THIS IS TRUE, and it seems to be, it is a matter of very great interest to us as Huna Research Associates. In fact, it is something almost made to order for experimental testing, for the studious who wish to look into similar matters in either religion, psychology or psychic science, or for those of us who love to speculate.

MY RECENT EXPERIMENTS have given me results that seem to me significant. I will pass on my findings so that you may see what I have done and make tests of your own. Also, I will join in the historical study and the speculation – starting the ball rolling in this article and report.

THE PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF THE TEST

I have a sacroiliac joint that first slipped almost twenty years ago when I made a heavy lift. Since that time, it has slipped with other lifts or twists and sometimes I have to get it adjusted or can kick in such a way that it snaps back into line.

This condition furnished me something to experiment on in the present project upon which I am reporting. I began the tests at a time when there was need of an adjustment, my right leg having gone slightly lame and the familiar numbness having appeared in the ball of my foot.

This furnished a condition with which I was long familiar. From experience, I had learned that such a slippage never corrected itself and that there always had to be pressure or the rather strenuous twisting of a violent cross-kick to adjust the joint.

What I wanted to know was whether or not I could make use of mana, directing it with thought, and cause the adjustment to take place as of its own accord.

WHAT THE HUNA THEORIES OFFERED

In Huna, we learn that mana can be generated in the body and caused to flow to various parts of the body, or to go through the hands or along an aka thread of contact into the body of another person or into the aka or shadowy body of a spirit, or into wood or other substances to be stored there for a time.

We also learn that a heavy charge or amount of mana (of the Aunihipili voltage or kind) will act as directed. In the case of the throwing sticks which were greatly charged with mana by the kahunas in battle, then hurled against a foe to render him unconscious at the slightest touch, we have the typical example of the mana charge remaining in the stick (and not flowing back into the body of the kahuna) then leaving it with such speed to enter the one hit by it that the shock or impact caused a mesmeric sleep condition.

In America, in early days, the medicine men of the Indians had learned to use mana under the name of orenda in some tribes and could touch a strong man on the chest with one finger and cause him to fall unconscious. (Matthew’s report. See SSBM for more details on this case and the one above.)

The legends of the Hawaiians tell us that the great chief, Hawaii`loa, used a magical force to cause the great canoes to cut through the water at high speed without wind or sail or paddle. This hints at the use of mana to exert physical force directly on physical objects.

WHAT PSYCHICAL RESEARCH OFFERED

At spiritualistic séances and in private tests of psychics by investigators, there have been observed many movements of solid objects by some invisible and seemingly non-physical agency.

Three-story stone houses have been smartly shaken, heavy pianos with men seated on them have been lifted. People have been lifted into the air (levitation) and smaller objects have been tossed or moved about endlessly.

Researchers have concluded that three things may be involved in this movement of physical things. First, a spirit, whose main function is to furnish the mind element to direct the action. Second, a form of force derived from the living, (named variously as “motoricity”, “nerve force” etc.) and third, the possible use of a substance which has been named “ectoplasm” and which comes out of the bodies of the living, being visible at times and used to materialize a body for a spirit – the hand of the body then being sufficient to move objects in the ordinary way. Ectoplasm, in the invisible form, has been found to extend as “rods” away from a medium and to move objects. These rods have been located by touch, a glass rod being used to feel for them after it was found that the touch of a hand caused them to vanish.

A famous case was that in which Mlle. Tomczyk demonstrated her ability to lift objects without touching them. I have before me a picture reproduced in Dr. Fodor’s ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF PSYCHIC SCIENCE, (Page lii) in which this medium sits with closed eyes and hands held with fingers spread at a distance of a foot above a table. Slightly below and between her hands hangs, as on invisible threads, a pair of shears. Dr. Ochorowicz is seen sitting beside her watching the shears. He found that this medium could depress one side of a balance scale with hands held above it. He made photographs in which were to be seen tiny threads running from hands to scale pan.

As we are interested in causing typical “adjustments” in joints without contact, as well as in our own bodies while lying still and relaxed, we need to consider the aka thread of Huna as a part of the mechanism by means of which mana is carried to the joint to be adjusted as by the use of physical force – in a quite similar way to the movement of objects.

As we are indulging in the speculative as well as the experimental side in our HRA work, I will quote Dr. Fodor’s materials, given on page 256 of his Encyclopaedia. Please remember that this was written before Huna was sufficiently known to come into the general picture.

There are observations to prove that threads, finer than a spider’s, may somewhat, in the manner of cobwebs, connect the medium with objects in the room. Mme. d. Esperance often complained of a feeling of cobwebs on her face. Margery and many of her sitters had the same experience. Ectoplasmic threads may be the instruments of telekinetic action in Poltergeist cases.

With Mlle. Tomczyk, Dr. Ochorowitz photographed a balance which was super-normally depressed by fine hair-like threads. The method must have been similar when Eusapia Paladino genuinely performed the same feat. In fact the thread was seen as, in a séance at the house of Cavalier Peretti in Genoa in 1903, it made a glass of water dance. Slowly and cautiously Cavalier Peretti drew the thick, white thread to himself. It resisted, then it snapped and disappeared with a nervous shock to the medium.

Bozzano observed such threads twenty times in the same year. Mme. Bisson detected them with Eva C. Dr. Jorgen Bull, of Oslo, found them instrumental in an invisible state in producing direct writing on wax tablets in the presence of Mme. Lujza Linczegh-Ignath. In some of the excellent photographs obtained by Dr. Glen Hamilton with Mary M., of Winnipeg, slight threads can be seen reaching up to a bell fixed high above the curtain which was rung occasionally. A similar attachment of threads to aported objects was observed in the photographs taken by Major Mowbray with the medium, T. Lynn.

The guide of Frau Ideler explicitly stated, in the experiments conducted by Prof. Blather of the University of Riga, that she spun threads to accomplish telekinetic movement. In red light and later in blue light, these attachments were observable and the medium seemed to pull the threads from the inner side of her hand with the fingertips. The threads seemed to be of a doughy, elastic substance, at first thick, then pulled fine, and they felt soft and dry. Even while being handled they diminished perceptibly. A piece was secured and submitted at once to microscopic examination in an adjoining room. An enlargement of the microscopic photo shows that it is composed of not one strand but of many fine but not organized threads. In its chemical composition the structure was not that of any of the known textile fabrics. Curiously, fire has no power over these threads. They make the flame withdraw. But they are conductors of electricity. …

(There follows reasons for the conclusion that the medium’s subconscious may be causing the projection of these threads to the objects and then causing the movement. MFL)

Turning to page 255 we find some interesting material.

It was a comparatively early discovery that the contribution of the spirits is, at the most, a directive influence and that in some mysterious way the bodily organism of the medium plays a dominant role. The spirits themselves described physical mediums to Allan Kardec in the following words: “These persons draw from themselves the fluid necessary to the production of the phenomena and can act without the help of foreign spirits.”

The “fluid” of this early age has been replaced by the ectoplasm of psychical research. The discovery of this substance facilitates the idea of a bridge between telekinesis (movement of objects by supernormal means, MFL) and ordinary mechanics. W.J. Crawford’s cantilever theory represented the most important attempt in this direction. It essentially means that out of ectoplasmic emanations, psychic rods, so strong as to become semi-metallic, are formed) that this extrusion acts as a cantilever, and the phenomena are produced by an intelligent manipulation on the part of unseen operators of these rods.

The contention that structures may exist which are invisible, impalpable, yet rigid, is a mechanical paradox. Rigidity means the power to resist deformation under stress. It presumes a force opposing the effort of deformation. This force apparently is not applied from any direction with which we are acquainted. Is it not possible, asks W. Whateley Smith, that it is applied from the fourth dimension?

From the study of how objects are aported and carried about over considerable distances, or are made to disappear entirely, we may conclude that mana, when mingled with a part of the aka substance and directed by the consciousness of the Aunihipili, (even with the Auhane remaining unaware of the things being done) can lift things with nothing upon which to stand, so to speak – a fourth dimension in so far as modern physics is concerned. The mana-aka “hands” may push on a joint to adjust it and at the same time not make us aware of having a place upon which to stand and against which its invisible “feet” are braced during the push.

The question of the consciousness which is a moving and guiding part of the aka-mana mixture cannot be considered without the mention of the Huna idea that all thoughts are made into tiny objects composed of the aka substance of the Aunihipili. These thought-forms might also become a part of the aka-mana mixture and act as the guiding force, even if the continued guidance of the Aunihipili was cut off or rendered inoperative in some way.

This is a highly speculative angle of the problem and, if followed through, will at once bring us to the question as to whether the “astral shells” of Theosophy are real and can exist for a time as entities. Or whether a unit much smaller, such as a thought-form and aka-mana combination, might not be projected telepathically to do such things as cause aports or influence people at a distance without their knowledge. In any event, we are not without a large and old accumulation of speculative material to draw upon at this point. Of course, we are not obliged to reach definite conclusions.

WHAT AUTO-SUGGESTION OFFERS

From a study of the way auto-suggestion works, we can throw still more light on the matter in hand.

Last winter I watched a teacher of hypnotism demonstrate the use of auto-suggestion. He silently suggested to himself that he enter a state of catalepsy and become so completely rigid that he could have his body stretched like a plank between two chairs and support the weight of two men.

In less than five minutes he was in the special state, entirely unconscious in so far as the Auhane was concerned, and with muscles as hard and rigid as if frozen. He was a slender man, but the weight of a friend weighing well over two hundred pounds did not cause his body to bend.

In times of ordinary consciousness he could not have supported the weight of a child of eight in this way, and he would have tired quickly. The conclusion must be drawn that more than the usual power was put to work for the feat. If Huna is right, this power is mana – a surplus of it placed in the tissues under a very strong and direct command of consciousness to do expected work.

Insanity patients often show many times their ordinary strength. Muscles that would be injured by such strains show no injury as a rule. The conscious Auhane has ceased to function in such cases and the Aunihipili or an obsessing spirit may be manipulating the bodily force.

The mana or vital force is used to move the muscles, but when it shows such extra power we must look for either a different use of the mana or for a difference in its amount and a possible admixture of aka or ectoplasmic substance.

We remember that in testing for a surcharge of mana by the Eugene Fersen method, we may exert a strong pull on someone without feeling any reciprocal pull on ourselves. The hypnotist who was able to lift a man from the floor by this same use of force, felt no pull.

In getting ready to experiment on my sacroiliac, I considered all these things and tried to weigh the evidence offered. Although the theoretical side of the matter was filled with complications and speculations, the actual methods to be used in such an experiment were simple enough. Not quite as simple as the apparent mechanism of fire-walking in which one prays to higher entities – and then just walks.

In this case the use of auto-suggestion was necessary because my Aunihipili had to be given the proper instructions for the part it was to play and the proper prod with the middle mana to make it obey orders.

The preliminary study of the materials laid out above gave me the needed conviction that what I proposed to do could be done. I also had the help of knowing that a few doctors had made adjustments without touching their patients, simply using mental directives to “beam vital force” at the place to be affected by the action.

I selected for the experiment the time of from 2 to 2:30 in the afternoon daily. As I often take a few minutes nap at this time to help with the constant late work in the Study, it seemed an ideal time to work.

Auto-suggestion is often best obeyed if one relaxes rather completely after giving it. The short nap would give the relaxation needed. It would also have the advantage of allowing a quick check to be made on the results.

My work with the TELEPATHIC MUTUAL HEALING GROUP (TMHG) for almost a year had made the accumulation of a surcharge of mana almost automatic with me. My “George” has learned to respond at once when a surcharge is needed and the work demanding a mana surcharge is approached. However, to make very sure that sufficient mana was accumulated, I performed the Ferson exercise, facing once in each of the four primary directions as I made the affirmations.

This done, I lay down on my bed and gave myself low-spoken auto-suggestion, saying that the mana surcharge was collecting at the sacroiliac to be used as a powerful force to make a perfect adjustment of the joint and to hold it in adjustment.

At the beginning of the series of tests I sometimes placed a hand over the joint when suggesting that the mana gather there, but as the position was awkward, I soon gave that up, simply lying comfortably on my bed on my left side with knees slightly bent while making the suggestions.

The accumulation of the mana surcharge took less than a minute. The auto-suggestion took about two minutes. I then relaxed mentally as well as physically, depending on my Aunihipili to find proper ways and means and set to work to make the adjustment.

In the first few tests I felt no sensation to indicate that the joint was being manipulated, but upon awakening I found that the leg was easier.

On the fifth try came the success I had hoped for. I had just started to drop off to sleep when I was aroused by a definite feeling of movement in the joint accompanied by an audible “pop.” I had no sensation of force being used on me – just the adjustment taking place effortlessly and with the customary sound.

I finished my nap and arose to find the leg free of all the usual symptoms. I was delighted and counted the experiment a long step ahead in our work of learning to use what we are coming to know through Huna and modern psychic science.

Several weeks have passed and three times the joint slipped a little. Once more it clicked back into place. Once, being pressed for time, I kicked to make the adjustment. I would say that my score now stands at about one click out of four tries, and always a betterment, large or small. Recently the joint has been staying in place so well that my experiment seems advanced to the place where I shall have to find a new something to begin work on. MFL