November, 1960

Testing of the Thomson Jay Hudson Healing Method

 

THE TESTING OF THE THOMSON JAY HUDSON healing method, as proposed in the last issue of Huna Vistas, was a project that brought cheers and approval from all sides, not a single objection being voiced although several of the HRAs wrote to say that they would appreciate any additional information that could be given concerning the manner of putting the Hudson Method to the test.

VISIBLE RESULTS WERE REPORTED by two HRAs after only a few treatments following the simple instructions given by Dr. Hudson in the portion of his book reproduced in H.V. 14. One very able HRA wrote: “I read the H.V. issue before (as seems to be her custom) reading it aloud to my husband and when I did, I omitted the part about the Hudson method because I wanted to try it on him, treating for a clear, poised, creative mind, proper bowel activity, and ability to walk firmly and naturally, with hip joints normal again. The first night brought somewhat astonishing improvement In the second phase, this, for the most part, has at least held fairly well. Then a few days ago he woke and startled me by saying he felt that he had ‘had some kind of visitation in the night’ and that it had in some way cleared his mind of cloudiness and the intense confusion he has had of late. So I’m eager to push on until some day, far or near, he walks normally again.”

Going back to her earlier healing efforts, the writer continues: “I am sure there are healing spirits that may be invoked and that one of great power works through the child ikon (a picture of which was sent out with a recent H.V.) . I treated for an eighty-five year old lady who finally collapsed after walking with two canes for years. The doctor said that it was very doubtful that she could walk again but that he would inject something into her knees that might help. Maybe it did. Her family thinks so. Maybe they are right but I am glad I treated just as I did for her and got the knowing that she would walk again and better than before. In a few days she came home from the hospital and just this evening I had the joy of hearing said, ‘Well, she seems to be all right. I thought she walked better than she did before it happened.”‘

THIS REPORT BROUGHT UP ANOTHER ANGLE: “I was thrilled by your discussion of the psychic healing as taught by Dr. Hudson, for I have always had a strong desire to heal and have made such efforts for my friends and family, usually unbeknownst to them ………. However, one time before falling asleep, I was concentrating on a friend who has had a most unhappy life and I was affirming health and happiness for her, when I felt a very angry, evil looking and powerful creature appear and say to me, ‘Go away and mind your own business.’ I felt myself bang back into bed and I was very frightened. I concluded from this experience that perhaps the karma of a person is being interfered with when we take it upon ourselves to heal without permission. Please give me your opinion, as I wish very much to be able to help my friends and my family and I feel handicapped by my experience ………

MY COMMENT: Only in Huna do we find a reasonable explanation of the experience reported above. Kahunas were well aware of the fact that the living can often be influenced for good or bad by the spirits of the dead. If you are interested in this angle, you will find it discussed and two cases of spirit trouble of this kind given in detail on pages 277 to 287 of my book Secret Science Behind Miracles. One who carries hates across at death may come back to stay close to those who have hurt one during life, and cause illness and trouble. The hate may not be reasonable –  just jealousy or malice behind the attempts to injure a living victim. Lacking kahunas, we are unable at present to learn whether or not there is trouble caused by spirits and to take steps to pacify the spirit or drive it away when it has no just cause for hate and its acts of
revenge. It is important to remember that the spirits can act on the living with suggestion, just as can the living hypnotic operator. Perhaps a P.A. reading is the best thing that we have to determine whether or not a living person is being so influenced. A “V” will pattern shows that one is not too difficult to influence with suggestion, and variations in the axis of the Aunihipili or “personality” pattern circle indicate degrees of spirit obsession. In this case the use of suggestion by a spirit should show as a mild obsession, and might also show if the will pattern gives variations of the pendulum swing from right to left and back again. I have found in readings of the badly obsessed as many as six directions of swing in reading the will pattern.

ON THE OTHER HAND, there may be a complex or fixation on the part of the one you may wish to treat. I once tried to treat by prayer actions a woman who was so far frozen by arthritis that she could move only one hand and her jaws. I studied her case and talked to her about her life, concluding that she was suffering from a fixed subconscious desire to punish the two people who had to care for her by remaining helpless. She did not suffer greatly. My mild attempt to get across to her the possibility of the cause of her condition met with an outburst that convinced me that a fixation had been triggered. There are those who do not wish, consciously or subconsciously, to be healed. Some people appear never to grow up. As infants they learned to cry to get what they wanted and to punish a parent for crossing them. The same mechanism, with elaborate variations, is used as years pass but as mental maturity fails to come. These actions may have all the appearance of coming from fixations established in childhood. As old age comes on and the Auhane begins to weaken, the Aunihipili assumes more and more of the control, and we see even more clearly the “childish” traits which were never outgrown. The ailing one may not wish to be healed. In fact, he may cling irrationally to his complaints as a means of getting his own way or of punishing those around him for real or imaginary affronts. Kahunas agreed that age made healing harder and harder until, at the end, healing efforts were useless.

IN OUR TESTING OF THE HUDSON METHOD we will do well to take obsessions, fixations and the recovery  limitations of old age into consideration. While we cannot tell in advance just what things we may meet in our healing efforts, we should not be discouraged if certain cases show no response. We try, and we learn.

MORE ON POSSIBLE EVIL AUMAKUAS

HRA Eric Biddle, of England has recently been editing PENDULUM magazine and running an excellent series of controversial  articles on “The Three Selves of Huna.” In a recent letter he wrote, “I think you are very wise in sounding the alarm regarding the possibility of evil High Selves — so that we could, in theory at least, have either Guardian Angels or Devils. There is some terrible truth behind the story of the Fall, and Original Sin and Evil is by no means only the absence of good or ignorance. Many an atrocious crime is inspired by devils on the other side.” He gives also a list of the Hudson books, found to be in the library of The London College of Psychic Science. They are: Divine Pedigree of Man (1900), Evolution of the Soul and Other Essays (1904), Law of Mental Medicine (1903), Law of Psychic Phenomena (1893), and Demonstration of the Future Life (1896). I have written to a large used book store to ask what ones of these books may be available, and at what prices.

THE PROBLEM OF DEVILS has been in my thoughts from time to time since the last issue of H.V. One of the HRAs sent me a very interesting book by C. G. Jung, titled JOB, in which this famous psychologist considers in a many angled manner the problem of the evil in Yahweh, as pictured by the early Hebrews, and also the evil in man. All is hinged on parts of the “Book of Job” in the Bible. This discussion by Jung serves mainly to show the confusion of thought on the problem of good and evil, dating from early times down to the present. In the Bible, the Concordances give us surprisingly few references to “Satan” and the “Devil,” but “evil spirits” are listed in more frequent references, especially in the New Testament,

WE HAVE FOUND HUNA hidden in coded passages in both parts of the Bible and recognize a similarity in the legends of the Polynesians and in Old Testament stories. As the possibility of Aumakuas being evil, with all their superior powers, is so startling and frightening, we may do well to see what we can find bearing on the matter in Polynesian materials. I, therefore, quote from an old book by Thomas Thrum (whom I knew well some years ago). The title is, Hawaiian Folk Tales. I quote from pages 29 and 30. (Published by McClurg & Co., 1917.)

“Highest antiquity is claimed for Hawaiian traditions in regard to events subsequent to the creation of man. In one of the sacrificial hymns of the Marquesans, when human victims were offered, frequent allusions were made to ‘the red apples eaten in Naoau,’ and the tabooed apples of Atea, as the cause of death, wars, pestilence, famine, and other calamities, only to be averted or atoned for by the sacrifice of human victims.” (This idea seems to have come down into Bible times. Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, and Jesus was sacrificed, supposedly, by the command of God to atone for the sins of mankind. M.F.L.) “The close connection between the Hawaiian and Marquesan legends indicates a common origin that can be no other than that from which the Chaldean and Hebrew legends of the sacred trees (of the Garden of Eden), disobedience, and fall also sprang. In comparison of the Hawaiian myth of Kanaloa as a fallen angel antagonistic to the great gods, as the spirit of evil and death in the world, the Hebrew legends are more vague and indefinite as to the existence of an evil principle. The serpent of Genesis, the Satan of Job, the Hillel of Isaiah, the dragon of the Apocalypse — all point, however, to the same underlying idea that the first cause of sin, death, evil, and calamities, was to be found in disobedience and revolt from God. They appear as disconnected scenes of a once grand drama that in olden times riveted the attention of mankind, and of which, strange to say, the clearest synopsis and the most coherent recollection are, so far, to be found in Polynesian traditions. It is probably vain to inquire with whom the legend of an evil spirit and his operations in Heaven and on Earth had its origin. It probably descended to the Chaldeans, Polynesians, and Hebrews alike, from a source or people anterior to themselves, of whom history now is silent.”

TWO FORMS OF EVIL are recognized in most ancient religions. (I say this knowing painfully well that this is a great over simplification of a most complex problem, around which stands a high wall of books containing endless speculations.) The FIRST form of evil is based on the idea of necessary contrasts such as Light and Darkness, good and bad. The Latin adage reads, Demon est Deus inversus. In ancient Egypt the lesser god, Ra, who was Light and the sun, went around the flat earth, becoming darkened during his lower passage. Good and evil were personified in many religions. The good angel, Lucifer, remained good in the realm of Light, but became the god of evil in the passage through the dark realm under the flat earth: became SATAN while in darkness. (See Alvin Boyd Kuhn’s book, The Lost Light, for a fine study of the various Egyptian originals of later beliefs.) Philosophers say that evil is only the lack of good, and that neither good nor evil in any way can be “absolute” — can exist one without the other.

The SECOND form of evil seems (after some days of anxious reading and reflection), at least to me, to be the one that is so frightening and so contrary to Huna as we have reconstructed it. This lesser and far more personal evil is the one we find mentioned in the New Testament in regulation Huna modes of thought. It is the evil caused by the spirits of the dead who return to prompt us to do evil deeds.

WE AGREE with kahunas that the evidence shows man to be allowed to enjoy “free will,” or to do as he pleases so that he can learn by experience and come to guide his own life instead of having to be directed by instinct  (or the grade of Aumakuas acting as “Nature Spirits” who overlook the lesser levels of life on earth) as are the animals. The Aunihipili is still an animal living in an animal body and limited by the laws of life ruling the physical levels. However, it has the Auhane to live with it and guide it. Through a number of incarnations, and during the needed period of education, experiencing and evolutionary growth, the Aunihipili learns what NOT to do under the new freedom of action, “free will.”  Its mistakes are the cause or substance of evil. Anything that causes hurt is evil. Aunihipilis, often overpower Auhanes and exert their wills as might predatory beasts.

They cause hurt to others. And when such beginners in the evolutionary school of life DIE, they may come beck as invisible spirits and fasten themselves to those of the living who are of a similar low level of growth and who will tolerate the evil impulses passed on to them by the spirits living with them and feeding on their vital forces, often exerting hypnotic or mesmeric compulsive force to cause evil acts. These evil spirits are the “personal devils.” Some may be on “the other side” a long time, and may accumulate craft and power, so that, when able to find the right individual in the flesh to influence, they may exert very evil influence from high places in government. BUT THEY ARE NOT OF THE AUMAKUA LEVEL. We know this because they perform no miracles of instant change in matter, as do Aumakuas in miraculous healing. If they had such power and the wisdom to use it, they would be seen venting their ire of evil on all sides by changing the physical or material bodies of the living whom they come to hate to cause instant falling apart. True, we have some instances on record in which a strange internal combustion burns up the body of an individual without burning the surroundings, but more evidence is needed.

IN SPIRITUALISTIC SEANCES, of course, we have the living transported from one place to another, materialized and dematerialized, and lifted into the air. But not once have I come across a record of damage being done in these spirit activities. Only the irrational poltergeist level of Aunihipili spirits have seriously bothered the living, hanging a few on hooks by the collar, throwing water over them, pulling off bed covers, and even setting fires close to their victims, sometimes burning garments or room furnishings. There are a very few records of a Fortean character covering the abduction of the living by some invisible something. In one famous case an individual was taken sailing away through the air, his voice growing fainter and fainter as he cried for help and shouted, “They have got me!”

ALL-IN-ALL there is scant reason to believe that there are devils or evil spirits of the Aumakua level who can and do use the powers, such as mentioned above in seance reports, for the purpose of injuring the living. We conclude from our studies of the ancient Huna lore that such things as materialization and dematerialization can only be used by spirits of the Aumakua level. It seems most probable that where the spirits of the dead (like ourselves, active Aunihipili and Auhane combinations), appear to produce the seance phenomena which seems to violate “natural law,” such spirits must have the help of their Aumakuas. The fact that no harm is done to the living gives us our best proof that devils or evil spirits cannot use the miraculous powers of the Aumakua level of being.

EVIL ON A WORLD OR NATIONAL SCALE, while bad enough, does not involve the use of miraculous powers. The evil men do is on the level of the Aunihipili — the physical — or the level of the Auhane —  the realm of thought. Men use evil means to gain power. They murder other men who stand in their way, and they inflict physical hurts on people, or force false doctrines, beliefs and thoughts upon them. Above the level of body and mind, there seems to stand a barrier placed there by a GOOD force to prevent evil being done on higher level scales. While some evil dictator may at some future time use the H Bomb to destroy the world, even in the face of such a vast evil we would still have to count the deed done on the level of the physical.

CASTING OUT DEVILS, is an item of the “Secret” hidden in the Huna code in the New Testament. We read in Luke XI:20: “But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.” The key code word here is “finger,” which is manamanalima. The first part of the word is the doubled mana, that is, the will of the Auhane. It is to be used as the power behind the hypnotic and mesmeric command to the “devils” to leave their host. The lima part of the full word has the meaning of “power” and “the hand of God” is a phrase indicating the greatest vital force, mana loa. As mana mana means also “to divide or to branch out,” we have in a “finger of God” the lesser power which the Auhane can use, the hypnotic. As the hypnotic power of the Auhane level could not command entities of a higher level, we must conclude that kahunas who used the code looked upon obsessing “devils” as the spirits of the dead, NOT as “gods” or beings of the Aumakua level or even still higher levels, in the realm of the “Akua Aumakua.”

IN THE LORD’S PRAYER is the vastly puzzling line that has laid theologians by the heels for centuries when they try to explain that God is entirely good. The line is, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” A good God, it is argued, would under no circumstances lead one into temptation, even for the purpose of making necessary the delivery from evil. To “lead” is, in the Hawaiian of the code, also “to dismiss” and “to loosen,” giving the meaning of letting the contact with the “Father in heaven,” or Aumakua (not Yahweh), be cut off. The code symbol of using the aka cord of contact with the Aumakua is to tighten (the cord). To loosen is the symbol of lack of contact. THE EVIL IS, IN THE CODE, wa le wa le, which means “temptation,” also “to ensnare,” and the snare is the code symbol for fixations and obsession by spirits. The snare was used in Polynesia to catch birds, and the word for “bird” was code for the human spirit. A “snare” was made of cords and the cord is the symbol in Huna of the aka cord or thread which connects the Aumakua with the Aunihipili and Auhane, or provides the telepathic aka connection between people. The word walewale has, from its roots, a further confirmation in its code meaning. This is “to keep trying to leap upward.” In other words, “deliver us from being ensnared by our guilt fixations or by obsessing and evil spirits, and keep us from having to try continually, in vain, to make contact with YOU.” (Wa is “t0 continue” and le is the root in lele, “to leap or rise upward.”) The line is, “mai hookuu hoi ia makou i ka hoowalewale mai . . . .”

THE SACRIFICE OF THE MAN GOD, JESUS was, in the original Huna lore, the symbol of what happens to the man caught in the snares and ways of evil which are fixations. “Ye are gods,” we read in a coded passage, and we are because the lesser god, the Aumakua, is a part of our human trinity of selves. We live through a series of incarnations in which we enjoy “free will” and learn by hard experience to be good and hurtless and loving, The failure in each incarnation ends by dying. BUT THE DEATH IS NOT TO APPEASE ULTIMATE GOD. We are living under the great natural law of Life, not being sacrificed for the pleasure of a hateful Yahweh, and certainly not to make amends for the sins of the world or of anyone. We  grow by dying and being given time to digest our earthly experiences and learn from them our lessons as best we can. To “take up” one’s cross is to endeavor to be so good that the evil suggested by “eating companion” spirits finds no responsive chord in us. We also must do what we can to overcome fixations and work in full contact with the Aumakua.

JOB, XIII: 15: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust HIM,” takes on new meaning in the light of the Huna meanings which we have been considering. Each individual crucifies himself over and over again until he learns that hurtlessness, good and love are the Law on the level toward which he must evolve. We are so dependent at this stage of our journey along “the Path.” We must have a mental picture of something good and “utterly trustworthy” and enduring and true at which to aim as “at a star.” It is unthinkable at this point of my progress to have in the Aumakua an entity which could be anything but good and wise and kind, as well as powerful. I offer you my CREED if you will share it with me. “I believe in the Aumakua Father-Mother as the embodiment of love, good and compassion, of wisdom and power. I believe in the three selves of man, and in the goodness of the Law under which we evolve.”

IN “OCCULTISM” one finds frequent mention as one reads the literature, of the old souls and the young. From our use of Psychometric Analysis readings we see so many who are evil all the way through. Perhaps these are the “young souls” just up from the animal level. There must be a reason for them being so evil, NOW.

TO GET BACK TO THE HUDSON HEALING METHOD, three HRAs who have the book by Dr Hudson, from which I quoted a summary of his conclusions, have written to call my attention to the fact that in copying, I left out item No 4, which reads:

“4. The subjective mind is amenable to control by suggestion during natural sleep, just the same as it is during induced sleep.”

This point was not vital to our understanding of the method to be used, but does help stress the belief that the element of self-suggestion is used when we follow his instructions to “will” strongly that we will go during sleep to find the selected patient and give him the suggestions of health.

ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE TRAINED TO USE SUGGESTION, however, before putting the Hudson healing method into test use as we are doing. A certain amount of suggestion is used by all of us during every waking hour as we direct our Aunihipilis and keep them working with us. This same amount of suggestive power is all that is needed to impress the Aunihipili of a patient who is asleep and whose conscious mind (Auhane) self has unhooked its connection and relaxed. The fact that the Auhane has relaxed its hold on its Aunihipili is a benefit because it does not stand as “censor” to ward off outside suggestions.

TELEPATHY is the KEY mechanism. All telepathic messages are (we learn from Huna) passed from one Aunihipili directly to the other when aka thread contact has been established. The Aunihipili can use the low mana as mesmeric force to make the offered thought-forms of the suggestion demand attention and a reaction, once they are implanted in the patient’s Aunihipili.

AS YET WE DO NOT KNOW whether or not the suggestion of the healed condition, made by the Auhane before we go to sleep, and given into the keeping of the Aunihipili, is or can be carried and delivered by the Aunihipili as instructed. But, as we are working with the making and sending of mana empowered thought-forms, and as we know that a hypnotized person will accept such thought-form clusters (or ideas) and continue to react to them subconsciously for several days (post hypnotic reaction to suggestion), we can guess that the Aunihipili can take our suggestions and give them to the patient. This complicated mechanism need not worry us, fortunately. Dr. Hudson tells us that our Aunihipilis will take care of all the intricate steps from making telepathic contact to the delivery of the suggestion.

“HOW DO YOU SEND THERAPEUTIC SUGGESTION?”

… asks HRA Ross Haynes, in a letter coming from Edmunton, Canada. He also asks that we discuss the question of WHAT the suggestion may be, and HOW to picture it. I wish I knew the answers. We have just covered the matter of what the suggestion is in terms of mana and thought-forms, these being manipulated by the Aunihipili and Auhane (and we must not forget to ask the Aumakua to take a hand in the healing work). The HOW part of the question is something that has interested a number of the HRAs who have written to say they will help run the tests. Frankly, I do not yet know just how one can best go about using the method. However, I will outline the steps I am taking in treating the three friends on my own list. (Only one has knowledge of the fact that I am treating via this method, and this one wrote to ask that he be used as a test patient for a malady of long standing. I am not sure whether or not there are too many to work with at once. Results will tell, perhaps. I would guess that one at a time might be better as a rule.)

MY FIRST STEP is to breathe deeply for about a minute, standing, while I tell the Aunihipili to accumulate a surcharge of mana. I then lie down and get comfortable in bed.

MY SECOND STEP is to tell my Aunihipili what we are going to do and what I wish it to do as its part in the effort. I take my selected patients one by one and tell my Aunihipili, silently, something like this. “When we are asleep, you will chose the right time and will go to contact our friend. You will say who you are and that you come in love to offer help in bringing about full and complete health. You will ask that you be received in the same spirit in which you come, and that your healing ministrations be accepted. You will ask that you be listened to while you speak words of healing and give them with the needed vital power to bring about the desired healing. You will then deliver with all the power you can, the following suggestions as I give them while picturing strongly the desired condition. You (say the name) are now recovering your sight rapidly. You are seeing more and more clearly. There is no pain in your eyes. You can see clearly and read without effort for as long at a time as you wish. You will rapidly become strong and well and filled with energy and the joy of living. You will bring all your innate healing powers into play and begin at once to rebuild and restore so that you will be, in all health aspects, as you were when at your best. Having pictured and made the suggestion just as if facing your friend, tell your Aunihipili to deliver the message and the suggestion, then return and rest a bit before going to work on the second friend. After a pause, and with more accumulation of mana, but this time doing this while in bed, take up the second friend’s healing in the same way. In turn, take up the third. After that, thanks should be given to the Aunihipili for its willing cooperation and to the Aumakua for its help. I have asked twice for a report from the Aunihipili to be given me upon awakening or in dreams that will be remembered. After the first night of treatment, I remembered two vivid dreams, both of people resembling the first two on the treatment list. One such person showed me large scars nicely healed. The other pointed to slippers with high heels which she was wearing as I helped her down very steep and narrow stairs. She said, “I could do better if I did not insist on wearing these pumps.” I said, “Plan to get rid of them and wear something better for walking.” Dimly seen was someone who seemed very capable and wise, standing on the other side of the woman and helping her also as she came down the difficult steps. When I awakened in the morning and remembered the two dreams, I at once asked my Aunihipili to tell me what they meant. I got the flash that the woman of the first dream would recover nicely and that the other woman had as yet some obstacle to her complete recovery, but would now begin to overcome it rapidly, since she had help. Not having a direct way of checking on results, I am continuing nightly treatment, using the same method but perhaps varying the suggestions made to go with my picturing of the friends fully healed, happy and active. I give thanks to the Aumakuas for helping, taking it for granted that they will be only too happy to have the door opened to their ministrations by the request for help.

WE MUST POOL OUR INFORMATION while making these tests, so that we can all have the advantage of the findings of others. Please write when you have something to report, and also describe the method you may have found best in practical use. Also mention failures and any difficulties which you may encounter. One way of working may not be best for all. Some may need a very simple approach, others may wish to elaborate on details and try several ways of going about the work. All will be grist for our mill as we go forward with the testing.

THE PATHS OF HUNA AND ZEN — A Brief Comparison by W. J. GABB, HRA

“That yet being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height.” (Paul Ephesians 111: 17 18)

The word Zen is used to denote a path and a goal. The goal of Zen is identical with the goal of Huna, which is fully conscious union of the three selves as, they “stand in line” in what the Hawaiian kahunas termed la lani. This is known in Zen as Satori, and in Huna mystic circles as “Illumination.”

The path of Zen differs from the path of Huna (with which readers are presumably familiar) since it concentrates on the endeavor to learn to think non-conceptually, so as to solve with instantaneous intuition such a problem as, “What was your original face before you were born?” This is in accordance with the utterance of a biblical Kahuna who once said, speaking as the High Self of Huna, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. “

Ways to the One are as many as the minds of men, and the way of Zen is to seek to emulate the thought transcendental, relying on the. word of another biblical Kahuna who said, “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he.” Zen thought corresponds to what Goethe had in mind when he wrote, “Only he truly thinks who thinks those thoughts that may not be intellectually conceived,” and it is in this respect that the path of Zen differs from the path of Huna. Huna postulates, among other things, three separate spirits that form a trinity in the one individual. Zen postulates nothing. Huna describes how “this” may affect “that” and achieve health, harmony and happiness. Zen may, and often does, do likewise, by means of the methods of Huna or humanism or shrewd common sense. But the thought of Zen is not of this world, it is that of un-common sense, and its training is, therefore, “other’: Thus a disciple of Zen may be set a spiritual exercise consisting of the problem, “There is a live goose growing up in a bottle. How would you liberate the goose without breaking the bottle or hurting the goose?” After perhaps years of pondering this one problem, the answer quite suddenly is self evident. Then the path is clear ahead, and the reaction is often that of a hearty laugh, as with children out of school. (The writer is the author of an excellent book on Zen, titled, The Goose Is Out. Ed.)

Full time “Illumination” is no doubt beyond the reach of most of us while incarnate, but we may legitimately look forward to flashes of the Light, varying in intensity and duration. Such a result may be achieved by the practice of Huna prayer, but in Zen the prayer is not specific, rather it takes the form of eating and sleeping, of feeling one’s heart break and of hearing one’s soul sing, in terms of a new dimension.

COMMENT may be made on the ideas held by kahunas concerning different ways of thinking. They had a surprising number of words to describe the different ways, and many of them contained a root meaning “water,” which is the symbol of mana. All thinking was thought to involve the use of mana of one grade or another. The word which matches best the “un-common” thinking mentioned in the above article, is mi kili, meaning, “to perceive internally.” The roots give the code or secret meaning of (1) “to do quickly”, and (2) “to fall as a very fine rain.” The flashing action of thought in Zen when the answer to a koan comes, is “quick,” as in Huna. It is to be supposed that this form of inspiration and realization is given by the Aumakua. The use of the root word for “fine rain” falling to “wet” one shows that kahunas were well aware of the fact that this higher level form of thinking, peculiar to Aumakuas, was shared under certain circumstances by the Aunihipili and Auhane of the man. Rain or mist is the code symbol of the highest grade of mana which is used by Aumakuas in their acts of mentation. As the fine rain falls and wets the lower man, the picture is very clear. This thoughtless thinking is done by the Aumakua and the results are shared with the lesser two selves as flashes of inspiration or true (mana`o) information or knowledge “illumination” on some point or other.

ZEN IN THE ART OF ARCHERY is the title of a small book sent to me recently from Australia by one of the good HRAs. In the book, a German, living in Japan, Eugen Herrigel, tells of his experience as a Zen student. There are several approaches to Zen, one through swordsmanship, one through a Chinese form of boxing, and one through archery. It was through the latter discipline that the author gained his enlightenment.

Working under a Japanese Zen master, he was taught to shoot an arrow at a target in a way that was quite unlike the usual shooting in which ordinary physical skill is developed. He did not go through the task of getting intuitional answers to the problems, or koans, such as the one about the goose in the bottle. Instead, he was taught to clear his mind of everything but the matter of drawing the bow in a prescribed way and firing the shot. (Releasing is, I believe the proper word to use.) His master demonstrated repeatedly that one takes the proper position and then some inner something begins to act while the mind and muscles remain relaxed. The bow was drawn while the muscles stayed soft and relaxed, even when the strongest bows were used. The release of the arrow came automatically, and the center of the target was invariably struck. I will quote a passage to give the flavor:

“Day by day I found myself slipping more easily into the ceremony which sets forth ‘the Great Doctrine’ of archery, carrying it out effortlessly or, to be more precise, feeling myself being carried through it as in a dream. Thus far the Master’s predictions were confirmed. Yet I could not prevent my concentration from flagging at the very moment when the shot ought to come. Waiting at the point of highest tension not only became so tiring that the tension relaxed, but so agonizing that I constantly wrenched out of my self  immersion and had to direct my attention to discharging the shot. ‘Stop thinking about the shot’ the Master called out. ‘That way it is bound to fail.’ ‘I can’t help it,’ I answered, ‘the tension gets too painful.’

“‘You only feel it because you haven’t really let go of yourself. It is all so simple. (Later he learns the art and we read:) “Bow, arrow, goal and ego, all melt into one another, so that I can no longer separate them. And even the need to separate them is gone. For as soon as I take the bow and shoot, everything becomes so clear and straightforward and so ridiculously simple. Now at last, the Master broke in, ‘the bow string has cut right through you. “‘

TMHG is on standard California time now. Match it with your time. MFL