A Variety of “Bodies”

January 1, 1953

MANY THANKS for your greetings by letter and by Christmas cards this year. I was warmed by your friendship and made very happy because of you all. May I take this opportunity to express my wish that each and every one of you will find much growth, inner progress and happiness in the New Year which we are now entering.

CHANGES FOR HRA LIE AHEAD, I am sure, and I am certain that most of you who have been with HRA for some time agree with me that the time is coming rapidly when we will have enough information to enable us to lay it in orderly fashion before the world. The time is also arriving when we will be as ready as we may ever be to begin putting to full use the Huna and other findings which have accumulated since SSBM was published. Let us pray that the Service we perform together of increasing world knowledge will be expanded instead of remaining confined to our own numbers.

THE HUNA ANGLE ON THE VIRGIN BIRTH, as presented in Bulletin 92, has brought in a number of letters with many excellent comments, some on the fact that virgin birth is a part of the lore surrounding the lives of most great religious teachers, and some on the fact that the virgin birth of Jesus, as the Christ, supplies the framework of a set of concepts far removed from physical birth and pointing to the mystical elements of a spiritual birth. Let me quote part of a letter from HRA A.Y., who has delved as deeply into this matter as anyone I know. He writes: “The important thing is not that Mary was a virgin, as claimed in the literal interpretation, but that the ‘Christ birth’ or birth in man of ‘Christ Consciousness’ – consciousness of the Aumakua, if you like – is a virgin birth. That is, it has no father – no antecedent cause – but comes into existence spontaneously. This is another way of saying that it was always there, and it is there potentially.

“The idea is a powerful one, and one which emphasizes the belief that true Christianity is not just ethics – a something imposed from the outside – but an unfolding of the POTENTIAL OF THE SELF.”

This reminds us strongly that there are two schools of thought in this part of the field. One school – the outer and dogmatic one of the older churches – has been content to preach the doctrine that man must lift himself by his own boot straps from the mire of sin. He must generate sufficient will and determination to reform himself. Only when that is done can he claim the boon of forgiveness for his former sins, but, once he reforms and gains this forgiveness, his salvation is assured. The other school has recognized the fact that most men are unable to lift themselves out of the mire in this way. While the fact of the complex or the obsessing influence of evil spirits is not clearly outlined, there is a tacit recognition of these things in so far as their restraining effects are concerned. Instead of demanding of man that he rise into the clear by his own unaided exertions, it is taught that if the man will raise himself part of the way, there will be a helping hand extended to him from above to help in the final stages of the work. This has been symbolized in many ways, particularly as a final unfolding of consciousness so that it includes the higher part of one’s being – a part that has long been cut off and which has remained hidden behind a veil through which men can see but dimly.

As I begin to see it, thanks to modern knowledge of the nature of the complex and to Huna knowledge of both complex and “eating companion” spirit influences, the effort to reform need not be very great so long as it is accompanied by a sincere desire to reform.

In the foot-washing rite given by Jesus, we see the desire to reform coming first. A hand is then given by a living companion who has already unfolded or, as we would say in Huna, succeeded in making a complete and free contact along the aka cord with his Aumakua at will. This companion accumulates the needed surcharge of mana, builds the mental picture of what is to be asked, and then presents the mana and thought-forms of the prayer, telepathically, to his own Aumakua asking that the request and mana be turned over to the Aumakua of the one who is being helped by means of the rite.

If the prayer is successfully made, it appears that the Aumakua of the one who has blockings in his path, begins at once to work from the top down to mine out the “stumbling blocks,” “cast out the devils” and open the aka cord “path.” This may take one sitting or it may take several – something we have still to learn – but the final result is that the path is opened and the candidate for this form of mystical aid or unfolding then becomes conscious of his own Aumakua and thereafter is able to get on with the making of his own prayers.

If present conclusions are workably correct, we need no longer fret about the supposed necessity of performing mystic exercises until we have given actual birth to the “solar body” or some other invisible type of soul vehicle. We can discard the idea that we, the Aunihipili, must eventually furnish a “body of light” through which the Aumakua can function – and without which it cannot function.

Representative of this school of thought was the late James Morgan Pryse, who wrote on page 6 of his RESTORED NEW TESTAMENT, “By gaining conscious control of individual evolution, he seeks to traverse in a comparatively brief period terrestrial bondage, rushing forward, as it were toward that goal which the human race as a whole, advancing at an almost imperceptible rate of progress, will reach only after eons of time. For the esotericism understands that true self knowledge can be obtained only through self-development in the highest possible sense of the term, a development which begins with introspection and the awakening of creative and regenerative forces which now slumber in man’s inner protoplasmic nature, like the vivify potency of the ovum, and when aroused into activity, transform him ultimately into a divine being, bodied in a deathless ethereal form of ineffable beauty. This process of transcendental self-conquest, the giving birth to oneself as a spiritual being, evolving from the concealed essence of one’s own embryonic nature a self-luminous immortal body, is the sole subject matter of the Apocalypse, as it is also the great theme of the Iseous-mythos.

THE DEATHLESS SOLAR BODY is supposed to represent the inner secret of Sun Worship by some writers. Pryse assigned it to a more general source and did his best to connect it with Christian basics through the Greek mysteries. Not satisfied with the scant theories to be found in the New Testament, he turned to India for more pointed instructions concerning the methods by which one might give birth to this new vehicle.

There, especially in the Sanskrit of the religionists, he came upon that common store of ideas which Theosophy first sorted over and then gave to the West. He shook the New Testament, the Greek Mysteries and the Upanishads together in the same pot and brought out a rather surprising dish to set before the public. He advocated the completely removed way of life in which all thoughts of sex were given up and the sex forces were turned in upon themselves with the intention of transforming them into the “serpent fires.” These forces, one negative and one positive, are supposed to rise along the two sides of the spinal column, awakening special sensory symptoms in the nerve centers which they pass, and causing a third force to rise and pass up the spinal cord to the brain. There, the “third eye” is “opened” and a form of high psychic is enjoyed in which conscious awareness of the Aumakua is developed. This awareness is felt in any one of four states which resemble a trance. Chief of the states was that called Samadhi in India, and which Pryse thinks identical with the Greek manteia.

The literature which we borrow from India is contradictory and vague in the matter of the birth of the solar type body and the methods to be used to realize it. However, the best of the modern teachers have continued to command purification, usually to the extent of giving up all thoughts of sex or gold. Conscious union with the Aumakua is seldom to be attained, but in the trance state of Samadhi, contact is made and held for a time, the return to normal consciousness being marked by the carrying back of the strange ecstasy.

Sri Ramakrishna (brain radiation only 369) was able to make contact in Samadhi at will, and his teachings in his “gospels” are filled with teachings aimed at helping his disciples to make the same contact, although, so far as I can see, he placed little stress on any mechanism other than devotion following austere living which rejected the normal life in the family group. He says: (Vol 2, Pg. 3, GOSPEL OF SRI RAMAKRISHNA) “Until the mind has attained a serene state, Yoga is impossible. The world’s blasts are constantly disturbing the flame of our mind’s lamp. But if that flame becomes absolutely steady, it will be the true state of Yoga. (Yoga is “union”) Woman [Actually, sex in general, not just sex for  men] and gold are the veritable obstructions to Yoga. Therefore do ever discriminate.”

Kahunas taught the normal way of life at all times, so far as I can learn. To them women [are] normal and good and part of the scheme of things, just as are men. Jesus, the great kahuna, gave no evidence of considering normal family life a barrier to contact with the Aumakua “Father” with whom he urged all to unite themselves just as he did.

It seems to me that much complicated theory was added to the simple truths first originating in Huna. These truths must have been carried around the world by the initiates or kahunas, and must later have been changed and contaminated by those who lost the secret meaning.

Turning back to Huna as secreted in the Old Testament, we find that the great Hindu preoccupation with sex and the “serpent fires” is represented only by the rite of circumcision. A closer study of this rite, which was carried to the Pacific by kahunas, shows what may be the basic truth upon which the fabulous structure of the Kundalini was slowly reared.

Abraham, so we read, met Melchizedec, King of Salem (“Peace”), and priest of the Most High God. He gave him a tenth of all he possessed, and was, in return, blessed. In Hebrews 7:1-3, Paul, whether right or wrong, passes on the idea that this “King of righteousness and peace” was without father or mother, beginning or end. As such he would have to represent the Aumakua of Huna, and if he did, the fact that he was given a tenth of everything points us to the inner or symbolic meaning behind the story.

Umi, in Hawaiian, is ten. In the Maori, the word retains the “k” and is kumi. The secondary meaning of this word which can be used for “tenth” is “To draw out, as a cord.” This warns us that the aka cord leading to the Aumakua is indicated and that some lesson is to be taught concerning the problem of establishing contact with the Aumakua by means of the aka cord.

Melchizedec gave Abraham the rite of circumcision, which, in the “sacred language” of kahunas means “To open the eye or the fountainhead.” The “eye” suggests the “seeing” or sensing of the Aumakua that comes when the contact along the unblocked aka cord is telepathically established. The “fountainhead” meaning gives us the unmistakable symbol of water (symbol of mana) fountaining upward – mana being sent upward along the aka cord to the Aumakua. The word for “tenth” also means to “draw out the breath,” symbol of accumulating mana, and it means, “To strangle” or prevent the drawing of breath (or accumulation of mana.) The male organ of sex was symbolically released from being strangled when the omaka or foreskin was split. The resultant flow of blood and water, (again in the symbolic sense, as in the flow of blood and water from the wound in the side of Jesus on the cross) represents the desired result of the rite – that of causing the mana to flow over the aka cord to the Aumakua and the contact established for the one upon whom the rite is performed.

Once the rite was established in ancient times, it must have been very effective as a means of keeping the kahuna peoples impressed with the importance of the hidden lore secreted in the rite rather than in the operation. Outsiders, quite naturally, might have been led to suspect that there was some potent magic in the rite and to set about the work of trying to learn its nature. That they concluded that utter and very non-normal giving up of all sex activities and thoughts would bring the benefits of this form of magic seems probable. Then, as the results of the magic may not have been immediate or impressive, the next step was to make the whole matter complicated, very difficult, and finally, dangerous in the extreme to attempt – as in the case of the “arousing of the serpent fires.”

In my correspondence I frequently am asked whether or not I agree that the “regenerative life” is something that must be lived as the first requisite of beginning to “enter the path.” My answer is always the same. I reply that I am convinced that kahunas were right in teaching that we should endeavor to live normal lives in keeping with the needs and natures of the three selves. I have often told how, in my youth, I pursued this question with great interest deep into Theosophy and came out convinced that not one of my selected mentors qualified through personal experience.

One thing that is, however, well known in psychical research circles, even if seldom mentioned in print, is that any protracted abstention from sex activities, be the abstention natural or brought about by abnormal physical conditions, tends to do peculiar things to the individual. Psychic sensitivity builds very rapidly. Many famous mediums were sensitive only so long as this abnormal sex condition was maintained, most of them losing their psychic abilities partly or completely if they married. Dr. Freud, father of psychoanalysis, found abnormal sex lives to be the major cause of abnormal mental conditions or fixations. The step from harboring a nest of fixations to harboring a nest of “eating companion” spirits of an evil and dangerous kind is a very short one.

Much more could be said on this subject, but for our purposes we can let the subject with the observation that normal living in the body and on the part of the Aunihipili is the first requisite of normal and sane living on the part of the Auhane. It follows that normal living must also be a prime factor, in so far as right living and expression is concerned, when the Aumakua is considered. The Creator undoubtedly knew what he was doing when He made us as he did, and we tamper with the normal at our peril. “Not too much, not too little,” applies here as elsewhere. Blessed be a glimpse of common sense – such as Huna is now giving us.

THERE ARE ALSO MANY GOOD AND HELPFUL SPIRITS, I am reminded by one of the HRAs. To this I hurry to agree. There are many spirit “guides” and communicators who give every evidence of having been good people when in the flesh and of having remained good in the spirit realm of life. My experience with spirit communication has been spread over a number of years, and I have yet to meet a spirit who was not friendly and anxious to be helpful in those instances in which full and easy communication through a medium was established. On two occasions I have had unpleasant experiences with what I took to be spirits, but with whom I was unable to converse in any way.

The evil spirits of the “eating companion” kind are seldom known to be near them by their victims. They seldom communicate, and are sometimes shifty, sometimes less evil than greedy and confused as to their own state. Some are brought to the fore by the use of suggestion, and are then considered by the doctors to be “split off parts of the patient’s personality.” In almost all cases they have responded to strong hypnotic suggestion and this seems to offer us a method of forcing them to leave their victims. The one exception to this rule which has come to my attention was that of a case in which a native Hawaiian woman was dying as a result of spirit attack in Hawaii. As I have told in SSBM, the Aunihipili spirits were sent by the kahuna to attack and kill the victim when certain adjustments were being forced. At the time of which I speak, there was a famous hypnotist in Honolulu, an Austrian medical doctor. He did his best to use suggestion to convince the woman that there were no spirits attacking her. Failing that, he tried to drive away any possible spirits with suggestion. He got no results. The woman died on the third day. It is possible that in this case the suggestion given as a directive to the attacking spirits by the kahuna may have been stronger than the doctor’s counter suggestion. Of course, many other possibilities suggest themselves to one on the speculative side. One may well ask whether or not the doctor’s slight doubt concerning the actuality of the spirits might not have prevented the proper use of his hypnotic powers.

THE SEARCH FOR DEFINITE EVIDENCE OF THE THREE SELVES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT has been going on in spare moments for some weeks. Not long ago, in Ferrar Fenton’s translation, I came upon what seemed to be what was wanted. The passages are to be found in I. John 5:6-8, where the wording is:

“and the Spirit is the Witness; that Spirit Who is the Truth – there are three who give evidence – the Spirit, and the Human Nature and the Earthly Life; and these three were in that One.”

The King James version replaces “Spirit” with “Father,” “Human Nature” with “the Word,” and “Earthly Life” with “Holy Ghost.”

Fenton says in a footnote, “This rendering is that of the Evangelist’s thought in his native Hebrew idiom, as, if we put the words back into the Hebrew, it can be seen to accord with the use of the ‘word’ (here he gives the Hebrew characters) in Moses and elsewhere.”

To me, the Spirit might stand for the Aumakua, the Human Nature for the Auhane, and the Earthly Life for the Aunihipili. However, when I consulted one of the HRAs who was able to check on both the Greek and Hebrew, he could find no justification of any kind for Fenton’s use of the terms which he selected.

It seems probable that there were no words in Hebrew or Greek which differentiated between the Aunihipili and Auhane of kahunas so that accurate translations into the common languages of the time were impossible. Has anyone further ideas on the matter?

THE FOOT-WASHING RITE and “sin” of tolerating urges from semi-obsessing spirits may be seen very thinly veiled in verses 16 and 17 of the chapter noted above. We read:

“If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin, if not a deadly one, should he ask, then He must grant him life for those not sinning mortally. There is mortal sin; I do not say that he should supplicate about it. All injustice is sin; and there is sin not mortal.”

One can read into this the idea that if one asks to be helped to get cleansed of complexes, his friend should act as the foot-washer and make the prayer to Aumakuas to have the Aumakua of the person with the sin-blocked “path” given the offered mana and the request to unblock the path. The “sin not mortal” would seem to be the obsessing spirit influence. The deadly sin which is mentioned has been the subject of much speculation for centuries. Some have said that it was the sin of murder, some that it was the sin of denying the actuality of God or of the Holy Ghost, while some have borrowed from Persia (if I remember correctly) the idea that this is the sin of refusing to produce children. In the “Sacred Language,” the word for “death” is maki or mate. In addition to the meaning of “deadly” as applied to sin, the word has several secondary meanings which served to cover the Huna meanings. In the Samoan dialect the word is applied to any path or trail which has become so clogged with bushes or trees that it is impossible to use it. Such a path is said to be “dead.” We know that the “path” is always the symbol of the aka cord leading to the Aumakua, so we can see at once that the deadly sin must be a condition in which the sin-stumbling-blocks cannot, for some reason, be removed. Looking for the reason, we find another secondary meaning, that of “to will or greatly desire death,” also “to permit, to allow.” This makes us look for the ones who are permitted to cause a make or completely “dead” condition of the aka cord – and these can be none other than the evil “eating companion” spirits. If a person is as evil as they, and desires and “wills” to share their evil impulses, there will be no desire to reform and to be helped – no “asking,” as in the passages quoted, and therefore, the Spirit or Aumakua cannot be asked to help him to unblock his “path.” He wishes to be evil. He will determinedly remain evil and, upon death, will probably become an “eating companion” in his turn. This darkened condition could hardly be darker, and it is difficult to imagine a condition more fitting to be classed as that of “deadly sin.”

THE SECRET BEHIND “PRAYER FOR THE SICK” is another thing I have been watching for in my study of Huna-in-Bible. In the New Testament, James 5:7-8 and 5:15 (Fenton translation Pg.1246), one reads: (as instruction in healing)

“Let him (the one who is ill) summon the elders of the assembly, and they will pray over him, applying to him oil with the power of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him; and if he should have committed sin, it shall be removed from him.”

The “power” to be used in applying the oil could be none other than mana, either administered through the hands or (also) sent with the prayer to empower the Aumakua of the patient so that it could do its part in the healing. To “raise one up” is hoala in Huna, and this means also (1) to anoint, as with oil, (2) a path or way (the symbol of the aka cord to the Aumakua which, in the “raising” is cleared of obstacles and opened by “the Lord” or Aumakua). The literal translation of the word for “raise” – ho`ala – is “to make or cause a path,” that is, to restore or open one. It is very interesting and significant to note how, time after time, it is stated that the “Lord” will remove sins.

This repeatedly verifies the conclusion that the Aumakua, when given mana and the request to assist, will clear out the complexes and eating companions and also repair the body of the sick one. (Ho`ala has still another secondary meaning, that of “to repair something; to restore it to proper condition.”) Dr. Brunler once conducted a test of oil such as is used to anoint the sick in prayers for healing. This oil is blessed and the sign of the cross is made over it. A number of dowsers at a dowsers’ convention were given each a small bottle of blessed oil to test with their pendulums. In each case the pendulum traced out the form of a cross over the oil. Dr. Brunler was convinced that the oil was an excellent vehicle to take and retain some form of force as well as the high vibration of the blessing. We might add from Huna the idea that the one blessing the oil would charge it with mana and fasten to the oil an aka thread leading to himself, and possibly through him to the Aumakua who had been reached in making the prayer for the blessing. New discoveries take us back to old rites and beliefs to find the fuller explanation, and the old comes to the new to be given its rationalization in terms of the modern findings. We progress rapidly these days in understanding, and should soon begin to progress more rapidly in the practical application of what we are learning.

NEW NAMES FOR THE HUNA DIRECTORY:

• No. 61 Mr. C.F. Stone, 2103 Highland Ave., Knoxville, Tenn. Good student, interested in many lines. Seasoned HRA.
• No. 62  Mr. R. C. Ehmke, 6401 Wentworth So., Minneapolis, Minn. He is much interested in dowsing, map and otherwise.
• No. 63  Mrs. Walter F. Grimm, 3132 Broadway, Yankton, So. Dakota. An HRA of long standing whose prayers get answered. She is especially anxious to know whether there are others in South Dakota who might write or whom she might eventually meet.

THE TMHG AND WALL WORK keep right on, with “specials” often done for those in great need of help. Remember to take a few minutes to think about Aumakuas and God and to quiet down and “solemnize the mind” (ho`ano) with reverence to get ready for the TMHG period. Also remember that in the word for “to heal” – pohala – we have the basic outline of what must be done. Note the root meanings, po: darkness, ha: to breath hard, symbol of accumulating mana and sending it with the prayer, and la: light or path, symbol of the aka cord leading to the Aumakua. Or, one might translate the word, “From darkness to light through the power of the breath or prayer.”

A RAIN CHECK ON THE VACATION was taken when it failed to come off. If a Bulletin is skipped, know that I made it. Amazing how hard it is to get away for three or four days.

CALL ME “MAX” WHEN YOU WRITE if you will. I like it – friendly and warming, something like calling each other “brother” or sister” in the country church circles. Also, it makes it so much faster and easier to head a letter, “Dear Max,” and in my turn I can reply, “Dear Bill” or “Dear Mary” instead of trying to be correctly formal and polite.

THE LETTERS F.H.F. which I often use after my name have come up for question. I was asked if I had invented myself a title or degree, and why I did not award myself the usual title of “Doctor.” Well, thereby hangs a tale. A year before the organization of the HRA, I joined six of my close friends to set up a legal corporation in California. It was named THE HUNA FELLOWSHIP, and members of it are “Fellows of the Huna (F.H.F.). They are legally entitled to the tag letters for their names, and, in every case they have done something outstanding to help along with the Huna research. There are now three members in addition to the six founding members. HRA is also a tag of which I am proud.
MFL