Some of the Elements of Easter
in the Light of Our Huna Studies

April 15, 1950

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.

EASTER IS OVER, so we may consider some of its elements in the light of our Huna studies and materials without the danger of upsetting to a degree the many Christian HRAs at a time when they find joy in a risen Lord. Not that any HRA who is worthy of the name is of closed mind and blinded by dogma. The majority, like myself, have been reared in the Christian faith, and even if we have seen in our mature years that its dogmas have been collected from many non-Christian earlier sources, we still love the old stories, no matter how discredited they may have become or how clearly we are able to see the human thumb prints in the margins of the laboriously written accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus and his followers.

I have long loved the simple manner in which HRA Christopher Tatham, a priest of the Church of England and one of my dear friends (also one who knows to the last detail all the possible flaws in the historicity of Jesus and Christian dogmas), speaks and writes of, “Our Lord.” Let me quote from his writings (Page 164, of WE THE REDEEMED.)

“So far we have considered the Christian ideal, and the promise of the power to carry it into effect, as inherent within Our Lord’s gift to his people. Further, we have considered the normal Christian experience, and have found that the two do not tally. There is a wide difference between the vision set out in the Christian Gospel and the experience of Church people today. The recognition of this discrepancy is obviously not going to help us to find an answer to the problems involved, (Note: The writer is discussing prayer and healing as presently found in the Church.) but at least it is a very definite step towards a solution, in that it provides an incentive and a challenge that becomes more urgent as time goes on.

“Now, first of all, it must be repeated that Christian people do not as a rule fail merely because they do not care. That they do care, and care intensely, is witnessed by the degree of pertinacity that is so continually shown before either a compromise is accepted or the quest abandoned. Even those who accept the cycle of failure and restoration cannot be satisfied with such a state of things. They only accept it because they do not know what else to do. Were they told of a method whereby they might cut that devastating cycle and really break away from the past effectively, and, their lives having been reconstituted, become different people, there is no doubt that the vast number of them would only too gladly avail themselves of such an opportunity.

“We are frequently told that the Christian religion is a delightfully simple thing, that any use of such a word as ‘technique’ with regard to it, or indeed with regard to any spiritual development, is outrageous. But is the Christian religion quite so simple? Here we meet a paradox. It is simple, and at the same time it is intensely profound. On the one hand Our Lord told us, ‘My yoke is easy and My burden is light,’ and in another place, speaking of the road to the Kingdom of God, He said the gate was straight and the way was narrow, and there were few who found it. Those who say that Christianity is so simple that a child can understand it are perfectly right, and those who say that Christianity demands the utmost and the highest endeavor of which a man in his full maturity is capable, and that nothing less can ever spell attainment, are right also.”

In the quoted material just given, we have an excellent example of the trend on the part of Christian leaders outside the Church of Rome, at least, to make use of modern psycho-religious discoveries and find better ways of getting assistance through the use of prayer, ritual and psychological techniques.

Agnes Sanford, in her book, THE HEALING LIGHT, 1947, is also representative of the movement to include a more modern approach, as may be seen in her heading for Chapter III, “Turning on the Light of God’s Creative Energy.” She points out the frequency of the use of the word “light” in the Bible and goes on to explain that light is energy, and that matter is energy. She reasons that if we are made of energy, then when we pray to God we should increase the flow of energy as God’s light, to ourselves for healing. As the X-ray is not seen by the eye, although it is light and energy, so God’s “Healing Light” may be entirely real and powerful while not seen or felt when acting upon us.

In Chapter IV, “The Re-birth of Faith: Re-educating the Subconscious,” Mrs. Sanford does not hesitate to deal with the conscious and subconscious as concepts not at all foreign to the Gospels. Had she gone on into the complex and its finding and draining off, she would have covered the field rather completely.

As we all know, Huna includes all that we know in modern studies of psychology, abnormal psychology, and psychic science. It may be considered the most modern of all psycho-religious systems known today. Moreover, even with its amazing freedom from dogma (coming largely because the kahunas knew that the conscious mind self was unable to grasp the facts of higher levels of being or understand the form of consciousness or mentation of the Aumakuas), Huna throws much light on the beliefs, dogmas and rituals of other religious systems – largely by showing the probable origin of each in some very ancient system which was highly evolved before being hidden in the “Secret,” or Huna, (which resulted in its preservation down to our times in a fair state of completeness and understandability).

To get back to Easter, and the light Huna may throw on it, we [do] not have, fortunately, to decide whether any of the Christian beliefs are or are not correct. That is a personal matter for the individual to settle. Our interest as Huna Research Associates is largely focused in basic concepts that may hold a great truth for us, or help us to a better view of Huna holdings.

Easter sets forth the basic question as to whether or not we, as human beings and “children of God,” rise again after death. The idea is very ancient. The very earliest Egyptian records tell us that the idea of the resurrection of the dead was not only accepted, but was already on its way to becoming warped and twisted, as all ideas become in time through lack of complete understanding. It is evident that the Egyptians were once in touch with a source of information, perhaps with Huna, which taught them of the three selves, three shadowy bodies, and three manas, also of the survival of these, BUT not the gross body.

The mistaken idea that the physical body also survived death was part of the inevitable warping of the original teaching, that is plain to see. One can imagine a simple ancient people seeing the body turn to dust and being unable to understand how it could be brought back to life and form when resurrected. They must have argued that a man simply MUST have a real physical body if he is to survive. So, in due time, steps were taken to preserve the physical body in mummy form and in safe burial chambers.

As all students of Egyptian beliefs will know, the greatest god was Ra (Light or the Sun), and in later times the closer and more personal gods were a divine Father, Mother, and their Son. About these, Osiris, Isis, and Horus, many stories were told. Dogmas were developed and beliefs crystallized. Like Ra, Osiris became the “Heavenly Father.” By the VIth dynasty, the belief that the body was to be resurrected became so strong that the idea of a ladder was introduced so that the physical man so “raised from the dead” might climb to heaven. It will be remembered that the Jews record Jacob’s vision of the ladder to heaven and the angels going up and down.

E.A. Wallis Budge, (page lxxi, BOOK OF THE DEAD) writes, “When the Osiris of a man (Note: The several parts of man which we term the ‘soul’ became called the ‘Osiris’ in Egypt) has entered heaven as a living soul, he is regarded as one of those who ‘have eaten the eye of Horus’; he walks among the living ones (Note: The glyph for the ‘living ones’ was composed of three glyphs for ‘life’ set side by side, checking back to the three selves, three manas, three akas, and perhaps looking ahead to the three days during which Jesus is said to have lain in the tomb before his bodily resurrection). He becomes ‘God, the son of God’ and all the gods of heaven become his brethren. Moreover, his body, as a whole, is identified with the God of Heaven.”

The eating of the eye of Horus was not surprising. Budge writes a few pages later, “The notion that, by eating the flesh, or particularly by drinking the blood, of another living being, a man absorbs his nature or life into his own, is one which appears among primitive people in many forms. But the idea of eating the gods is not apparently common among ancient nations.”

The eating of the gods was, as we know, common to Egypt. We can see how it might easily have passed on down into later Christianity as a part of the Mass and the ceremonial eating of the body of Jesus, in the form of the transmuted bread and wine. In fact, it would be difficult in the extreme to account for the eating of the supposed actual flesh and drinking the actual blood of Jesus on the grounds of any ethical and idealistic religious system. It is a mechanism of magic dating back many centuries before the advent of Christianity.

Only when we know Huna and the three grades of mana and their natures and uses, can we probe behind the decadent ritualistic remains of a once quite scientific set of beliefs and practices. In our TMHG work, we daily accumulate a surplus of mana and send it to the Aumakuas to be used to materialize the conditions we ask for in our ritual prayers. At the end of the prayers we ask that a return flow of the High Mana be sent to us as the “rain of blessings,” the pure water in rain being the Huna symbol of the mana used by the Aumakuas. We do not eat the gods, nor they us. We give our mana and absorb it back in a different form which aids and purifies, according to our present understanding of the “Secret.”

Not only in ancient Egypt was the secret use of mana lost. It became a muddled concept in the hands of men scattered around the world. In Polynesia, Central America and Australia there grew up the belief that by eating the flesh and drinking the blood of an animal or of an enemy killed in battle, mana was absorbed. Mana fell to the low estate of the modern vitamin more or less – a life-element to be obtained as a prime necessity.

The mana concept appears, in all probability, in the story of “Manna falling from heaven” for the Hebrews – who, we must remember, had spent much time in Egypt. The three manas, in the hands of the men of India, were expanded to forty-nine and the original significance lost in the idea of the “pranas.”

In the Christian gospels we read much of “laying on hands” as a part of the healing rituals, but we find no explanation of the transfer of either mana or healing thought-forms from healer to patient. Go read of the use of water in the healing, but not of its value as a physical stimulus in impressing the Aunihipili of the patient with the fact that it is being cleansed (kala of the kahunas) of “sins.” In the ritual use of “holy water” in the Church we find nothing of the Huna knowledge that water can take and store the low mana – possibly being used with great effect in early times in the shock treatment with mana which dislodged obsessing entities from the obsessed.

We tend to consider the concept “of one God to be something handed down to us by the Israelites, but it is found in Egypt long before the captivity.” Dr. Brugsch collected many striking passages that prove this. Here are some as given by Budge (Pg. xcii Ibid.)

“God is one and alone, and none other existeth with Him – God is the One, the One who hath made all things – God is a spirit, a hidden spirit, the spirit of spirits, the great spirit of the Egyptians, the divine spirit – God is from the beginning, and He hath been from the beginning. He hath existed from of old and was when nothing else was and what existed, and what existeth He created after He had come into being. He is the Father of beginnings – God is the eternal One. He is eternal and infinite and endureth forever and aye. God is hidden and no man knoweth His form. No man hath been able to seek out His likeness; He is hidden to gods and men, and He is a mystery unto His creatures. No man knoweth how to know Him – His name remaineth hidden; His name is a mystery to His children. His names are innumerable; they are manifold and none knoweth their number. God is truth and He liveth by truth and He feedeth thereon. He is the king of truth, and He hath established the earth thereupon. God is life, and through Him only man liveth. He giveth life to man. He breatheth the breath of life into his nostrils. God is father and mother, the father of fathers and the mother of mothers… He multiplieth Himself millions of times, and He is manifold in forms and in members… What His heart conceived straightway came to pass, and when He hath spoken, it cometh to pass and endureth forever. God is the father of the gods; He fashioned men and formed the gods. God is merciful unto those who reverence Him, and He heareth him that calleth upon Him. God knoweth him that acknowledgeth Him. He rewardeth him that serveth Him, and He protecteth him that followeth Him.”

RA, THE FIRST AMONG THE GODS OF EARLY EGYPT, WAS THE “LIGHT”

His name meant “light” or “sun.” The word of the kahunas was the same, la, the “l” replacing the “r” in written Hawaiian. The word for Sacred” was La`a. The sun was called la. We may safely conclude that the Huna system was known in very ancient Egypt, but that it became much contaminated after the kahunas departed. Witness the long list of gods who followed Ra. By the XVIIIth dynasty, the great god was Amen with whose name we still end our Christian prayers, but his title was Amen-Ra, and he also retained the title of “The One of One.” He was spoken of as having had “two risings” (check the idea of “resurrection”), and was called “The Lord of the World” and “The Prince of Light and Radiance.” (The idea of radiation, kaa in the language of the kahunas, seems gradually to have become lost as an important factor or mechanism of contact with the Higher Beings. It does not appear in the titles applied to Jesus except indirectly in references to the radiant light of the halos – the “glory” of which we read in the Greek versions of some Gospels.

The root word ka was used in Egypt down the centuries, and at last comes to us as the “soul” because we have no other word with which to translate it in English. It gives every evidence of being the aka or “shadowy body” of the Aunihipili as known in Huna. (It has been shown in Bulletin 29 as the glyph of the two upraised arms, the glyph perhaps giving us the significant indication that it is through the Aunihipili and its aka threads – for arms – that contact is made with the Aumakua.) In Hawaiian, the root ka has several meanings, all important to Huna.

1. To radiate out from a center.
2. To strike against. (This was the Huna symbol of making successful contact with the Aumakua via the aka thread – the Aunihipili doing the work. If the prayer rite was not a success, the kahuna was said to have “missed the mark,” as missing a mark with a thrown spear, in this case with the mana-activated aka thread extended “a finger.”)
3. To bail water. (Symbol of a rapid moving or flowing of low mana)
4. A vine, the branches of which spread and run. (Symbol again of the mana in movement.) (The root with an added a gives kaa, which has much the same set of meanings, but also the important meaning of “a strand of a cord,” which connects the concept of radiation with the aka thread.)

In connection with our study of the possible Huna and Egyptian origins of things found in Christianity, it seems most significant that the same Huna word that we have been discussing, kaa, had also the meaning of “A CROSS.” To the kahunas, the cross was the symbol of “obstruction” or “objection” to any form of progress, and may have pointed in the connection with kaa to the complex or other obstacles which might prevent the Aunihipili from making the desired contact with the Aumakua upon order from the Auhane or what we call the conscious mind. There are two other words in the Hawaiian for “cross.” Kea, which also has the meaning of “to hinder,” “to object,” and one of “to shoot or throw arrows of sugar cane” – note the idea of trying to hit a given target. The second word is amana, whose root mana brings us back to the idea of the vine, and includes in a roundabout fashion the idea of a tree and its trunk, trees being used in making crosses in building houses. The simple cross has one crosspiece and might symbolize the blocking of only the low mana flow. The cross with three crosspieces, which is met with in Christian symbolism as well as in the symbolism of other systems, may be the original Huna version of the “Tree of Life” in which the three manas, three selves and three aka bodies are all indicated.

In the ritual of the Mass we have what is considered the most important observance of the older forms of Christian worship. It has been reformed to the “taking of communion” in Protestant churches, but for us, the need of the moment is to see if we can find in the origin of this ritual eating of the god and drinking of the blood, some of the things important to Huna.

It is evident that the Mass was borrowed from earlier religions and worked over to fit Christian purposes. We recall the period when efforts were made to gather and burn all the libraries of more ancient writings. Fortunately much escaped, and we have not been prevented from examining at least some of the evidence which shows the “heathen” origins of borrowed and distorted rituals and dogmas.

The “New Dispensation” offered as an excuse for such actions, may be seen in a verse of the Catholic Office of Benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament (See THE RITUAL OF HIGHER MAGIC, by Furze Morrish for this material and much additional speculative comment.)

“Tantum ergo Sacramentum – “Therefore we, before Him bending,
Veneremur cernui: – This great Sacrament revere:
Et antiquum documentum – Types and shadows have their ending,
Novo cedat ritui. – For the newer rite is here.
Praestet fides supplementum – Faith, our outward sense befriending,
Sensaum defectui.” – Makes our inward vision clear.”

The ritual absolution or cleansing of the ones performing the rite checks with the Huna kala or cleansing.

The invocation of the “angels” of the several orders is similar to the Jewish Rite of Angel Invocation and also checks with the Huna rite of making contact with one’s own Aumakua and, through it, with the Great Company of Aumakuas.” In Egypt the phrase, “great company of gods” is often met in the inscriptions. The glyph for such gods is a square like a small flag, set at the upper end of a long thin rod reaching down to the base line of the writing. The rod could well symbolize the aka thread of contact. Several such glyphs in a row give us the “great company of gods.” The word “angels” is better for use in a religion in which only one God is recognized, even if He be a Triune God, and even if His Son, Jesus, is also God in theory.

It is highly significant that no offering or sacrifice is made in the Mass. None was made in Huna, and both rites aimed at making contact with Higher Beings, although the Christian rite allows only for the feeding of the lower man on the body and blood of the High Being – while in Huna the lower man offers his own life, not as body and blood, but as his mana life force. With this offering in the Huna ritual, and with the feeding back of the High Mana from the Aumakua at the end of the rite, we see a completed and reasonable act of prayer.

We must not discount, however, the importance of the use of the Host and other things which provide excellent physical stimuli to reinforce the rite – all excellent Huna. With such a very little change and addition, the rites of the ‘Church could be made to conform to the ancient Huna in all details’ – perhaps even in power to obtain results such as those obtained by the kahunas. MFL

BOOK REVIEW: THE EXPANSION OF PERSONALITY

By Ernest McBride

HRA Ernest McBride has been with us since the early days of HRA. He heads his own church and is a very modern thinker. His book is nicely mimeographed and bound in a soft cover. 48 pages. Price $2 plus sales tax in California and 8¢ postage. Address him at 1207 No. Orange Drive, Hollywood 38, Calif.

The well planned book lays out a regular set of daily readings and “disciplines” for the reader to work through to the end of expanding the narrow confines of habitual thought and reaction patterns. It is designed to present to the reader, [one] section at a time, the various elements involved in living more fully and better from a psychological and slightly religious angle.

A good sample is found on page 8 under the heading of INSTINCT OF RADIANT CONSTRUCTION. There [is] given a list of words and some pointed comments, all expanding the general idea and bringing it into clear focus for examination, meditation and eventual action. Here are some of the words:

“Act, build, create, exploit, invent, organize; originate, mold, shape, and use. Construction: to set in order; to put together the parts of something; to build. Radiant Construction is the building of anything that will enhance the lovingness of life that will promote enduring happiness. It is always accompanied by good will, kinship and enthusiasm. To understand that the greatest and most thrilling project of which any man is capable is the construction of a strong, vivid, integrated, expansive, effective personality.”

Space is given to short and pointed expansions of the topic, such as, (under Decisions To Be Made) “To understand that I am a free flow of power, which I can mold and shape to such ends as I desire. To be richly inventive and original. To have sublime self-trust. To have a passionate delight in radiant construction.”

At the end of each page, one finds a few excellent quotations from assorted sources, some old and some as new as one from Don Blanding’s A Grand Time for Living which will bear quoting here:

“As long as I walk on my two feet; Blue horizons ever retreat
But the super-sonic plane of mind leaves blue horizons far behind.”

*************
Another new book, Psychical Physics by S.W. Tromp, done in English by a Dutch professor of Geology teaching in a University at Cairo, Egypt, is in the Study this week on loan. It covers the physics of dowsing, radiesthesia and kindred divining phenomena. After reviewing the field and recounting the results of many tests, experiments and studies, a few new theories are advanced. [It is] filled with technical explanations which need a combination of electrical engineer and biologist to understand fully. Part III has much material on the subject of hypnotic phenomena. [It] does not discover the manas or aka threads, and skirts the subconscious.

NEWS – NOTES & COMMENTS

HRA MEADE LAYNE, so well known to most of the HRAs as editor of the ROUND ROBIN, his mimeo magazine which has covered so wonderfully all phases of studies related to our own, and head of the BSRA, of which I stand with him as one of the directors, will be aided by orders for the new book ETHER SHIP MYSTERY AND ITS SOLUTION, reviewed and mentioned in recent bulletins. Like most of us, Mr. Layne is convinced that the FLYING DISKS are real, and of the utmost importance. The evidence for their origin on the etheric levels, and with the ether entities behind them, is given in the new book as information that should be spread as far and as fast as is possible. More of the books are being made up all the time and deliveries are faster.

In spite of the liberal response to the appeal at the first of the year for donations, over and above the usual subscriptions, Mr. Layne tells me that only enough help was given to clear back debts and make possible the January issue of ROUND ROBIN. The issue planned for March 2nd has been held up in hope that some really abundant gift might be received and, of course, the issue planned for April 15th is forced to wait. I hardly know what to suggest. We all know the great service done through ROUND ROBIN and the BSRA releases (the latter have been possible to send out, as they are of only a few pages and can be mimeographed by Mr. Layne on a small hand machine) and I am sure that all of us have done our best to support this work to the limit of our means.

I realize that most students of the “occult” – as we are classed – are of limited means. Our efforts have been made in the direction of psycho-religious research instead of money making. I also know that times are none too good. Our own HRA membership is now a third larger than last year (July and August), but the help sent to Cigbo during the past three months has dwindled to a little over half what it was. I had hoped that by making the bulletin larger and sending it out twice as often, the interest would grow as well and with it, the support, but it has not worked out that way. (This is not a “beg” on the part of Cigbo. He will continue to work with what you send in, and when your combined interest indicates that changes in our activities are in order, they will be made.)

Meantime, as of the issue of the next bulletin, the semi-annual clearing out of dead wood from the HRA Bulletin list will have to be done. So many come in, you know, and are never heard of again after their first letter. Also, the first notice we have of the fact that many HRAs are no longer interested is the return of a bulletin with the envelope marked “Moved – No Addr. Return to Sender. Postage due 2¢.” It would be a great favor to me if any HRA who has lost interest would squander a penny post card to say so and to stop the waste of bulletins. About one-tenth of the HRAS are carrying the greater part of the weight of Cigbo’s box at the present time. The other nine-tenths either can send nothing or send in so little that it will not pay for the stamps used in sending them the bulletins. All this just for your general information. I feel that the Huna recovery is under Guidance and that if changes are needed in the way we are working, we will be Guided to make the right changes.)

THE PAGE OF INSPIRATIONAL MATERIAL will be included from time to time. In this bulletin it has been replaced by the Egyptian gleanings on the concept of God – one which will bear meditation by the best of us.

A GROUP meeting in Van Nuys, Calif., studying Huna and other related things, can accept a few more. A Southgate, Calif, HRA asks if there is another HRA in his neighborhood with whom he might undertake Huna experiments. Send your letter to MB and I will forward it for you.

OAHSPE ON HEALING. HRA. M.G. calls attention to “Book of Judgment” Chapter XVII, verse 10, as giving us something to strive for in our Huna work. This verse lays stress on the importance of preventing disease and thus avoiding the necessity of trying to find healing when disease strikes. Right control of our Aunihipili and of what we think – of the things that cause fixations – all help prevent later trouble.