June, 1963

From the Mouth of the Elephant

 

LETTERS HAVE BEEN COMING IN regarding my personal Huna “Credo”, and I must admit that I am slightly surprised to see how few of the HRAs either agree with me as to what beliefs belong to Huna, or as to which ones they accept, in or out of Huna. It appears that the plans to do a bit of missionary work among “the heathen”, boils down to doing the work “at home”.

OUR MOST EXPERIENCED GROUP LEADER, Lucien Beck, of New York, has written concerning the suggested plans to reorganize the HRA and expand the work:

Mon cher Max:
Desist a moment and reflect on what Peter “and time” have achieved with Christianity. This in spite of the flagrant renigations of the Master. Your idea is excellent. I am all for it, and was always for it. I never practiced the lore without this goal in mind. Still, I cannot understand why we have waited all of these precious years before putting it into general practice. From my humble experience as a group leader – almost five years – I know that the Secret attracts many, that very few amongst these are able to absorb enough Huna to develop it effectively; that nine of ten adherents will eventually pollute it with other concepts, and render it stagnant. This seems to be the pattern prevailing over the general public, and decidedly, it is not yet ready to follow its simple rules without a firm directive. So, knowing this to be a fact, I am in favor of a creative “selected secret order”, authoritative benevolently leading the main flock into a spiritually oriented evolution.
Joy of the crest to you, Lucien

HOWEVER, THERE IS ONE CONSOLATION for me in the face of the fact that so few HRAs will take their Huna straight. just this week I had a long letter from a Canadian HRA who pays $25 every so often to take a special course of lectures and training in an order where they teach what is called, “Revala”. Having accepted at least some of the Huna concepts, she gets into the hair of her teacher at frequent intervals by asking questions as to Huna possibly having the better theory on different matters. Also, just a few days ago I had sent to me a copy of a lecture, a full hour long, to be followed by a question and answer period in which Huna is explained delightfully well and compared at point after point with the teachings of “Concept Therapy”, much to the advantage of Huna, in my opinion.

The lecture was given to two groups of people who had paid their $500 and taken the course. A few were critical of Huna, but most were interested. What the heads of “C.T.” may have said or thought, I can only guess. Perhaps they did not hear the lecture. There are a number of other “teachings” and courses of which different HRAs write me from time to time. And, of books offering teachings there seems to be no end. They begin with systems made up out of whole cloth, run the gamut through systems constructed from the beliefs of various religions and cults, and round the circle with “teachings” offered by spirits. Not that there is not much of great value in all these sources. … only, they are not HUNA, and our tribe is supposed to like Huna, at least just a whit better than the other sets of invented, assembled or conglomerated ideas. You name it, and some HRA will have studied it or be in the midst of making a study. We should, perhaps, have several “degrees” to the Order of the HRA, such as Subud Huna, Concept  Therapy Huna, Rosicrucian Huna, Theosophy Huna, Scientology Huna and so on and so forth, We might even try to have at the tail end of the others a very little degree for the very few who would go for the degree of Huna Huna, if we could ever agree on what Huna contains.

THEN WE MIGHT ALSO HAVE a minus method of classifying ourselves. For instance, there are the HRAs who think P.A. readings are no good and have no connection with Huna, even if the psychic powers of the Aunihipili are used. These might be classed as Huna minus P.A. Some will have none of the idea that the male and female must meet and blend to make an Aumakua. Here we might use the classification, Huna minus one half of the Aumakua. Or, Huna minus reincarnation. Then there could be that fine method of simplified belief in which (as I am told is standard in Concept Therapy) the subconscious and superconscious are lumped into one, as in Jung’s system of Psychology, or into Troward’s “Universal Subconscious”. Of course, this simplification can be carried to extremes, as in one “Teaching” in which an HRA was indulging at the time she wrote me delightedly and excitedly, “Mr. Long, I have just learned something wonderful! The subconscious is God!”

IN REGARD TO MY PRESENT EFFORT TO FOLLOW GUIDANCE in trying to lead the HRA into wider and greener pastures (as you have observed if you have read the last several issues of Huna Vistas and noted the “backing and filling” which I have done), I am at present strongly inclined to make frequent use of the chorus line which ends the verses telling the myth of the Goddess Pele, of the volcanoes and her sister, Hiiaka. It runs: ELIELI KAU MAI! which translates, “Wonder and awe possess me!”

I begin to suspect that my Guidance has moved in strange and devious ways to get me (1) to advocate expansion of the HRA work in the lines of organization and missionary efforts, (2) to call for the opinions of the HRAs in the matter and with the result that I have learned the hard way that I was quite mistaken in my comfortable assumption that most of the HRAs accepted Huna, as I see it, and almost as completely as I do. This leads to the present state in which I look with much clearer insight at the situation. I have learned that almost no one wants to be bothered by group efforts or missionary exertions.

ASIDE FROM MEMBERS OF THE LOS ANGELES GROUP, mentioned in the last H.V. as wanting introductions to other HRAs in their end of the woods, I have had but three HRAs write that they would be willing to be introduced to HRAs near them, if any. Only one gave me permission to give name and address in the H.V. if I so desired. She lives in Arizona, far from any other HRAs, but generously offered to do anything she could if a group could be formed there, even to letting the group use any and all of her complete file of back Bulletins and Huna Vistas. (Cheers for you, Olive Kirkpatrick!)

NOW THIS SOUNDS VERY NEGATIVE AND DISCOURAGING, but, as a matter of fact, I am much encouraged, now that I see better where we stand on beliefs and what we need to try to do to get closer together. I am like my grandfather’s loved colored friend. The story was often told when I was little as an example of what faith and courage can and should do. The friend was a farmer and he had experienced many reverses. One day Grandfather stopped by for a chat and they talked of the crop failure and panic prices for farm products. Grandfather asked, “What are you going to do, Sam?” Sam thought a moment, then replied, “I ain’t discouraged yet. I’ve been drown out by floods, burned out by fire and blowed out by a tornado. After every time I started to pray hard and make the best use of the little I had left, and the Lord has always found some way to give me a hand. No, I ain’t discouraged yet. I’ll start my Fall plowing, and the Lord will find the seed for me to put in.”

I WROTE A LETTER THE OTHER DAY to one of the good HRAs who just can’t accept the idea that we have to have the Aunihipili send our prayers telepathically to the Aumakua. And, as for the idea of reincarnation, she is very skeptical. Lastly, the idea of having to unite with some male to be made perfect and to become an Aumakua simply revolts her. If she has to suffer such a union, she will stay right where she is and continue to be a Auhane. However, she will go along with most of the other Huna beliefs, and will do what she can, short of having to join a group or be made to try to do missionary work in her Bible Belt town. She likes the code meanings which throw light on the Gospel teachings, and even at times wonders whether or not she should try to learn to make use of self suggestion or make Psychometric Analysis readings, having had both books since their publication. In my letter to reply to hers, I told her that it was not necessary to believe anything or do anything that one does not wish to believe or to do. I advised her to try to make the best use of that part of Huna which she liked; to pray in her own way to her own idea of a Higher Being, and not to worry about having to unite with any male or bother about reincarnation. I told her that all I ask of my HRA friends is that they continue to stand by and to give what material and moral support they can to the effort to find out just what kahunas believed, to the end that some day we may be able to learn how to use the ancient lore and to know what system is nearest the truth.

IN OUR WORK THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR IGNORANCE, however. We must at least find out what Huna or any other system of psychology and religion contains before we begin to raise our objections. Our missionary work will, inevitably, be one of EDUCATION. We cannot intrude on the free will of any individual to try to force him to believe as we do. Our Service will be to lay the Huna information before him in the best way we can, and as fits his level of evolution. He must accept or reject for himself.

AFTER MANY UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPTS to organize and have the HRAs come to know each other, in or out of groups, I feel that the time has come to “use what little we have left” and pray hard for Guidance and Help as we do our best to make use of it. The Los Angeles group is the only purely Huna group, but Huna is included in the discussions and studies in the Boston group under the able leadership of HRA Isabel Hickey. A token start has been made and I can almost feel the wheels beginning to turn behind the scenes as the Great Company of Aumakuas begins to use us for ITS purposes – purposes which we may not yet glimpse or even imagine, but which we can be sure are much better than we could decide upon. One of our HRAs who lives by Huna, and with increasing success in his life and business, wrote recently that he went to bed with the problem of our new organization on his mind. In the middle of the night he awoke to find thoughts from inside running through his mind as if being spoken to him. The voice was saying, “Huna does not have to find its way to success.” In telling me of the matter, the HRA reminded me of the Bible quotation, “Ye do not need to fight this battle. Stand ye still and see the salvation of the Lord.”

GROUPS NEED SOMETHING TO STUDY, TO DISCUSS AND TO DO, I am beginning to see. Just yesterday (in terms of time as I cut this stencil on Sunday, May 5th) Dorothy McDonald, of the Los Angeles group, came all the way down to talk things over with me. The group is well advanced, with only one fairly new member, and this one has been catching up rapidly so that she can fit right in. For study purposes they can use the monthly H.V. if new material is included each month. This can be discussed also. But if meetings are to be held twice a month, there will have to be additional study material made available, or, review studies of my books or of items from the back bulletins will have to suffice. At present a review study of Growing Into Light will be undertaken. For something to do, the group may take up Psychometric Analysis and begin to practice. Homework could be P.A. readings as well as personal efforts to learn to use self suggestion as instructed in my book of that title. Healing attempts are not promising as yet as someone would have to be brought in to work on, but prayer as a group could be used in Huna fashion for people whose inked signatures or pictures were available to pass around for contact through sight and touch.

FOR ADVANCED STUDY, the first thing needed is a teacher to decide on the materials and set the course. Lacking anyone else to act in this capacity, it falls on me to see what I can do. Of course, I am well qualified because I am quite like the elephant in Irving Cobb’s story, “The Bull Called Emily”, whom he described thus: “Emily was a ‘bull’, because in the show business all elephants, regardless of sex are ‘bulls’. Emily was very wise. In fact, what she did not know, she strongly suspected.” As we have no “Word of God” book to turn to as an authority, and as my books have not yet aged in the wood to the extent that they speak “as from the Horse’s Mouth”, we will have nothing final to point to as do our friends “in Science” or in Theosophy where Blavatsky and Besant and the authors of the Gita can be cited in proof of a statement. We have no Ernest Holmes or Max Heindel, not even an L. Ron Hubbard or a Volney G. Mathison, the latter a self-made and very vocal “authority” on everything in the occult and metaphysical and psychological field. (If you wish to know how mistaken Max Long is and how useless the beliefs of kahunas, read his book, Through the Mighty Temple Doors. He will also tell you in it how almost all other systems are lacking except his own.)

NOW LET’S PLAN A LITTLE TOGETHER. Since the majority of you are not for taking part in group work, and very few are willing to let me introduce them to other HRAs by letter, even when P.A. readings are made to safeguard the association, it looks as though we need to find a way to use “what we have left” of interest and enthusiasm – interest in Huna, even in conjunction with other systems of belief or even with Huna minus  items.

We see that missionary work aimed at the man in the street is something that demands literature for distribution – booklets making the approach on the lowest degree level and in the simplest form. To follow up any interest that might be aroused, we would need several graded pamphlets to keep passing out in order to bring along the more intelligent to the point of a fuller understanding of Huna. As such booklets are not written, to say nothing of being financed and published, that step will have to wait.

Our best approach has been, so far, that aimed at people of college level intelligence. We have no genuine HRA with a P.A. reading of under 340 degrees, after ten years of work. On the TMHG healing list we often have one or two well below the 300 degree level, but they do not need to have a good grasp of Huna, I am happy to say, in order to benefit from our combined prayer actions.

A letter from one busy HRA put things in focus for me as fitting most of our members. She wrote that she was too busy to take part in group work and that she could see no way to do missionary work with those around her, having tried to interest several others and having found them either unwilling or unable to understand even the simpler things in Huna. She said that she loved having the Huna Vistas and that in them she always could find the latest discoveries and usually quite a little to reread and study. She asked, “Why can’t those of us like myself just go on as we have been, doing the best we can with the bulletins?”

This seems to be the most practical idea for immediate use, especially in the face of the fact that since sending out the personal Huna Credo, I find that we need to have a series of basic discussions of controversial points so that we can, on the average, agree more closely on the nature of Huna and on its validity. The things I find out and think are valid can be presented as usual, together with the things you as HRAs may report as discoveries – or we can present, elephant fashion, “What we suspect.” These things will not be authoritative, of course, and we will retain our research side. But even if things cannot be stated as “From the Horse’s Mouth”, perhaps we can say, “This is from the mouth of the Elephant,” meaning mostly myself. I have learned that the HRAs are greater individualists and “lone wolves” in their studies and beliefs and doubts than I has guessed. The Elephant can speak and the Wolves can howl back. All will be as it should be. I will try to show why I believe or suspect item after item to be true in my Credo. You can read what I have to say and accept or reject. But, as I have remarked, “There is no excuse for ignorance”, and before rejection, a genuine HRA will carefully consider all the arguments, keeping his or her mind open until the reading is finished. New material which will appear in the H.V. can be handled in exactly the same manner and be read with whatever degree of suspicion may be indicated by the background of the reader. When I talk Elephant to you in the H.V. on any point where there is lack of fair agreement, it will serve as a general review for all of us, and reviewing is good. In churches the constant reviewing and rereading of texts from the Holy Writs of the favored Religion keep the minds of the worshipers centered on the accepted ideas, otherwise they might forget them to a large extent. Testimonial meetings also play a large part in convincing the doubtful that the beliefs of any given church work for many, and should work for all who will live and pray right.

TIME HAS CHANGED FOR THE TMHG to fit California going on daylight saving time. The hours of the sittings, 3 and 7 P.M., have been made an hour earlier. This will continue until, suddenly, in the Fall, the secret is divulged that clocks are to be set back again. The last H.V. was off the mimeograph before the present clock advance was suddenly commanded. The work continues steadily. Please remember that a signature written in ink or a small photo is needed for contact here where I act as center of the activity. I can only guess at the number of HRAs who sit in on the given hours, but imagine there may be as many as thirty. Results are still unpredictable. Often immediate Help is reported to a greater or lesser degree. Many who have asked to be put on the TMHG do not report after the lapse of thirty days and are soon dropped without the results of work for them ever being known. All too many of the HRAs send in the signature of someone they may only have met by chance, and then forget about it entirely (just as so many forget to give me their change of address and force Cigbo to bail out the returned H.V. and either hold it, or, if it has a new address written on it by the postman, forward it first class mail.)

Please do not ask to have anyone placed on the TMHG list unless they request it, and unless you are willing to see to it that the reports are sent in each month. I feel sure that if we could, in the TMHG work, have some way to put the one needing Help, through the old cleansing of the kahuna healers, we could get far better results. Kahunas insisted that amends be made directly or indirectly, as the circumstances demanded, for hurts done others. They then had the patient fast or give up smoking for a time and finish with making a gift large enough to be a real sacrifice – these things to make the Aunihipili agree that the man was now free of guilt and deserving of Help. If you, as an HRA find that you need TMHG Help, it will be well to follow the old methods of kahunas as nearly as possible to get yourself opened to the Ministrations. An aka cord of connection between you and your Aumakua may be blocked by a feeling of guilt on the part of your Aunihipili even if you are not at all aware of it. In working to get the contact restored, be sure to talk to your Aunihipili and assure it that “Where there has been NO HURT, there has been no sin.” When doing things to make yourself deserving of Help, do not forget to tell the Aunihipili that you, as Auhane and Aunihipili combined, are getting more and more near to the deserving point with every smallest good deed you do. A physical stimulus is very effective, such as fasting etc., or doing some physical work which may be distasteful in the name of general amends and Service. Always be sure that when you ask for material things, you do not ask that they be taken from another and given to you. Peter must not be robbed to pay Paul. In the same way, be careful not to ask that someone be forced to do something. Free will must not be invaded. Ask only that the person in question be Helped to do the right thing if he wishes to be helped. Of course, one may ask Help in preventing others from unjustly hurting you or those you love. It must be remembered that we who pray Huna fashion for others in the TMHG will get far better results if we have cleansed ourselves and feel deserving of having our prayers answered for others or for ourselves.

THE AUNIHIPILI IS THE KEY to successful living and prayer. It is your younger brother, tied to you more closely than a brother in the flesh, and your job is to guide and help it, just as the Aumakua has the job of guiding and helping you both in every way you will allow. (Your free will is always respected, otherwise you could not learn from experience.) Watch your emotions and hopes and fears so that you get into step with your Aunihipili and can love, correct, help and instruct it.

In Genesis, 4:9, some ancient kahuna inserted a code word truth to be preserved for us until the time when we  could understand it. We read:

“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel, thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper?”

In the language of the code, the word for brother which was used was kai kaina, meaning “the younger brother”. The root, kai, tells us that this younger brother is the Aunihipili, for it is the much used symbol word meaning, “to lift up, or lift up and carry”. The Aunihipili “lifts” up the mana and “carries” it and the prayer thought-forms to the Aumakua. It, and it alone, can do this. Knowing the code as we now do, we can make no mistake about who the “brother” is and what he can do as his part of living the three self life. (In the code language there three words for “brother”. One means just any brother, another means an older brother, and the third means a younger brother. It is the third word which has to be used for Abel, for he was a younger brother.) The second root part of the word for younger brother is kaina, which means “younger” and also, “to walk softly or quietly.” This second meaning is standard code for the Aunihipili and it is a perfect symbol for the Aunihipili of whom we are not aware. It works silently, even if mightily and very wonderfully, behind the scenes. The symbol is used also in the name for the Aunihipili, u is a “self” and nihi means “to work silently, carefully, secretively, and to abstain from doing something because of fear or stubbornness”; pili means to be united to something else very closely, to be united as a servant to his master, to stick together as if glued, to stick. The Aunihipili and Auhane are united.

I have gone to some lengths to give the basic meanings and implications in the above words in order to show just one instance in which the code is so clear and perfectly applied that it cannot be reasonably brushed aside without consideration and without giving a very good reason. One of the HRAs whose intelligence is very high and upon whose opinions I have leaned often, shocked me recently when he wrote that he accepted much in Huna, but did not believe that there was validity in my claim for the use of the word code in the Bible passages which I have from time to time pointed to in the books and bulletins. I wrote back to ask whether or not he had ever given close study to the evidence I had presented from year to year. He answered that he would go back over the material again for a second look. Since then no mention has been made of the matter.

I argue it this way. Can anyone show me another language containing words to fit all of the elements in the Huna system? I answer, there is none. I ask whether it could happen by accident that translations of certain words from the English of the Bible back into Hawaiian continually gave us words with the outer English meaning, BUT also gave words either describing definitely the quality of some element in the Huna system OR named something which invariably stands as the symbol of an element? I answer that the chance of such a series of accidental occurrences being found is a billion to one. I further ask, if such evidence as this cannot be considered valid, then what’s wrong with it? It is not enough for anyone to say, “It is impossible in my opinion, so I refuse to believe it.” The “impossible” has been demonstrated so often since the certainly flat earth was found to be round, that even the most improbable demands a close look. I admit that nothing is so improbable as the Huna language code in parts of the Bible, but there it is, and simple denial does not cause the troublesome theory to vanish into thin air.

BOOK REVIEW

As many of us are interested in “Subud”, the appearance of a new book on the system of belief and practice is important. This book is Songs of Submission, with the subtitle of On the Practice of Subud. Written by Ronimund von Bissing. The publisher, James Clarke & Co., Ltd., 33, Store St., London, W.C. 1. Price not given. 180 pages. (I am indebted to HRA E.S.R., of Spokane, Wash., for the gift of a copy.)

In the foreword, the author (who may or may not be a woman, as I suspect) says, “May God pardon – and man forgive us – where we may have been an impure channel and may have brought ourselves forward to write what was to have been written only through us, not by us.” From this I am not sure whether the material is of the “Inspired” or mediumistic or automatic writing kind, or whether it was done in the ordinary way. It may have been a combination of both. It has a strange “otherworldly” quality in many places, and is written as if dictated by one claiming to speak with final authority. Let me quote from Chapter VII, page 20, titled, “The entry of God into man is an act.” This will give the flavor of the presentation.

“The entry of God into man is an act, in a moment of time and at a place in space, although of a nature bounded by neither.

“A man holds himself open to receive, naked before his Creator, in the presence of a witness who is already a bearer of fire. God’s covenant is that His force then enters: it cannot be otherwise.

“Since man has nothing, nothing else is required of him. Since there is nothing that he can bring to God except himself in surrender, only his surrender is needed.

“That he is touched, he will know of himself, then or later. No belief is needed, for he will have his own facts.

“It is impossible to understand in advance, because experience truly new cannot be explained in terms of the old.”

I find nothing in the book to say whether the founder of Subud, Pak Subu, has outlined the materials given in the book in advance, or that he even approves of what is presented as if from God Himself. The beliefs touched upon are perhaps the most simple to be offered in our time. Nothing stands between Ultimate God and each man. The “force” of God which is said to enter man with the help of an “opened” fellow member of the cult is in no way described. No hint of mana or of a Aumakua, although Subu, in his own writings took up some ideas from Buddhism for discussion. Subud has the great advantage of simplicity, and even the lack of definite descriptions of what may be experienced in a “latihan”, or group practice of the opening of oneself to the flow of God’s force. I have been hoping to meet some friend who has gone over to Subud in a complete way so that I might be able to judge the effects in terms of the person as I knew him earlier. Unfortunately, I have had no such opportunity. Moreover, the opportunity seems to grow less and less as Subud retreats from its first burst of growth to a less explosive state. The book is an interesting addition to the scant literature on the system. It preaches utter surrender and the doctrine of letting God do everything for and to you that needs to be done. Huna, in very sharp contrast, holds that man is put here to learn by doing, and that he must do all he can on his own, but can turn to the Aumakua for help if he cannot manage certain things for himself. In asking for Help he has much to give, the mana and the thought-forms of the pictured condition which he wishes to have help to materialize. The partnership of the three selves of man, standing infinitely below Ultimate God, is entirely lacking in Subud.

A SPECIAL OFFER IS BEING MADE by Dr. Martin Larson, (4108 E. Stanford Dr., Phoenix, Ariz.) on a new printing of his wonderful 720 page book, Religion of the Occident which all of you should know from past reviews and special price offers made through the H.V. It gives, at last, all the basic facts about the origin of Christian literature and ideas, starting with the ideas as they formed in ancient Egypt and ending with a final dogmatic freezing of doctrines after ingredients had been absorbed from no end of other religions, including Buddhism. This is a “must” book for all HRAs, and now it can be had from Dr. Larson for $1.50 in a fine hardcover binding, or three copies for $4.00, at which price one can be ready to present a book to friends at Christmas. We will be quoting from this book in our studies, and I very much wish that each of you possess a copy so I can tell you to read certain pages which need to be read to cover some item of discussion. Permission has generously been given to quote at length, but space in the H.V. is limited to short “takes”. For those of you who do not know how Christianity got to be what it is today, this book is a splendid education in itself and is unique in its field. (Do not order from me. Send your money directly to Dr. Larson at the address given above.)

CHEERS! CHEERS!

Several mails have come in since I started writing this H.V., and eight more HRAs have said that I could give their names to other members in their vicinity, at my discretion. Two would be willing to let their names be given in the H.V. Thanks to HRA Thomas Langan, mentioned as having come to live at Vista to help with the work on the clerical side, I now have a new set of file cards with your names classified according to place of residence, so can begin to see who is close to whom. Given time, I will get the P.A. readings made and begin trying to introduce those who seem to me apt to get along nicely as friends and fellow HRAs. New readings will be reported to those read, and I am sure that this will act as an incentive to many who might otherwise not want to bother. If your reading is slow to come through, it will be because I have so many waiting to be read and not connected with the introduction project. I may have help in reading soon, as one HRA who seems to have the needed skill is planning to practice up and begin checking with me for accuracy. Eventually we of the HRA should have members willing and able to make readings for a regular fee. For difficult cases we should be able to ask for a reading from three different people so that the results can be compared and an average struck or a correct reading decided upon. For instance, just yesterday I ran into just such a case, and would very much like to have my rather surprising readings (which change over night) run to be checked. Spirit influence is the most usual cause of difficulty, as the spirits seem to show in one reading, but be gone and not show in another.

WE NOW HAVE A CHURCH AFFILIATION!

In mail just arriving, I received a fine long letter from HRA Hal Styles, D.D., pastor and founder of the “Church of the Good Neighbor”, at 1806 Victory Blvd., Reseda, California, which is not too far from Los Angeles. He has been an HRA for some fourteen years and Huna has become so much a part of his thinking that it is constantly turning up in what he teaches in his sermons. He does not want us to say “Church is OUT” where his church is concerned, as it is not at all orthodox, accepts all religions, and bases a fine understanding of the New Testament on the Huna code findings which allow the inner teachings to be seen and understood. He quotes parts of the Huna Vistas frequently in his sermons, and says that his 200 members are the best posted on inner meanings in the land. He will soon begin to read my personal Huna Credo from H.V. 45 and to discuss it before his congregation. This is most encouraging, as is a statement made recently by HRA Isabel Hickey that at least fifty people in her large group have benefitted greatly from the knowledge they have gained of Huna.

DEAR MAX: (A letter reads)
Go easy on us. We’ve been a research bunch all the time up to now, and I am sure many are as confused as I am in having you want us to change over to put what has been found into practice – start groups, spread the knowledge of Huna, and start trying to graduate to be Aumakuas. Take it slow, Max, and give us time to see what is up.

(Another HRA writes): “As for the goal of  ‘graduation’, my only goal is to live as hurtlessly as possible and to use every ounce of strength and courage to keep mankind from destroying itself. To me, that is the only job worth  doing today. If I walk forward by what light I have – and Huna is to me such a light – I think the next step up will take care of itself. The Huna study group idea seems difficult and apparently would include only those with high P.A. readings, which would exclude many devoted Huna students. I hope that a time to time report to the ones in my class, on the work of the Huna elite can be managed some way, and of course the book about the code meanings in the Bible must go on so it can be published.”

(From Australia, HRA V.F. writes): “The explanation of the Aunihipili, Auhane and Aumakua (in any booklets made up for Huna missionary work) must be simple, and all the proof of secret meanings by reference to Hawaiian translation should be omitted as being too confusing for the average person. However, what should be stressed is the teaching of how to accumulate mana, experiments with mana and the pendulum; correct prayer action, concentration, relaxation etc. going (by grades?) from one level (of intelligence?) to the next one.”

(HRA Eric Biddle, of England, whose letters should be familiar from appearing in earlier issues of H.V., gives wise counsel in discussing proposed changes of plans for the work. I quote a paragraph from a long and valued letter) “My own feeling, put forward diffidently, is that there are two possible courses. One is to keep things very much as they are now and this, I appreciate, may lead to stagnation rather than progress. The other, which I feel is far better, is to reorganize those who are prepared to accept the main tenets of Huna, to endeavor to apply them to their own lives, to use them to help others, to continue studying with this end in view, and ‘Preach the Gospel’ of Huna as and when suitable occasions arise – if necessary, diluting it somewhat, but not overdoing this! Indiscriminate propaganda would be a waste of time – and money – that could be more advantageously used. (I comment: This seems to be the heart of the Guidance now developing for our efforts. mfl. )

STOP THE PRESS! EXTRA! EXTRA!!

Since writing the above material, 20 hours have passed. And a NEW GROUP HAS BEEN FORMED! This morning I had just  parked my old car on a back street beside a slope covered with weeds and grass, when Tom Langan came along for his morning stroll. We fell to talking and I held up the running of an errand which had brought me there. We stood in the pleasant dirt behind the car and organized a new group with two members, Tom and myself. Then we began to name over the HRAs who live in neighboring towns and who could join in. We spoke of how we could get together when we wished and decide what OUR group wanted to be and do and have. We will not be a secret order type of group, but will be no end exclusive. No one will be allowed in who has a P.A. reading of under 340 degrees, moreover, he will have to be clockwise and constructive in “will” and in his “personality” circle readings. If he has evidence of “eating companions” or fixations he will NOT be allowed in. We will decide later what to do about those outside the fold, and may make an outer circle for some and have a healing circle to try to help the others.

There are many exciting possibilities, and reports on progress will be made as we get going. We probably will organize under our HUNA FELLOWSHIP corporation charter, revive the FELLOWSHIP, elect new officers to replace those missing, and give ourselves official and legal standing. We may even arrange for you HRAs who live at a distance and who wish to be members of this pilot group just the same, a proper place on the rolls, and perhaps one day you can arrive for a visit at a time when the group is meeting, to give the password and enter in to be given the right hand of Huna Fellowship. HRAs who join in (and can qualify to get in) will proudly sign their names when they wish with the initials “F.H.F.” at the end, standing for “Fellow of the Huna Fellowship. ” Does that ring a bell with some of you who won your FHF years ago when we were trying to get the plane off the ground and failed? We’ll issue membership certificates also, and perhaps have different degrees to study for and win.

I am most uplifted and optimistic, now that we have rounded the circle and have come upon the secret of “Graduation”. We will have our Credo whipped into shape and know what to teach when teaching is in order. The healing work will not be forgotten, and work aimed at correcting conditions rather than health will receive increasing attention. In the morning mail I received a note from a lady who has been on the TMHG for help in changing certain conditions. It reads, in part, “I am happy to tell you that my problem has been resolved in the most wonderful way. I am deeply grateful for your prayers (in and out of the TMHG) all of which have been answered.” Aumakuas are so very kind. We are not alone. Help and Guidance is there. I am certain of that if we can open ourselves to it and play our part in the process.

THE CLASS IN “CREDO” WILL NOW PLEASE COME TO ORDER

A letter says:

“The Huna Credo came to me as a blinding flash of light – in a metaphorical, not a literal sense ….. All the confusion and uncertainty vanished and I saw things more clearly than ever before. The only item at which I still hesitate is IX and consequently to some extent VIII…”

Item IX has to do with spirits getting separated and with obsession by them in one of several forms. Item VIII has to do with REINCARNATION and ultimate graduation to the Aumakua level. As basic beliefs in Huna we have the survival of the man as a spirit, and following that, the matter of returning to reincarnate in a new body for a sufficient number of times to allow the triple   spirited man to learn life’s lessons. The whole of the “Graduation” by benefit of the Aumakua “Grace” depends on the matter of reincarnations, so let us study this matter together for a few minutes. Allow me to “talk elephant” to you.

It is apparent (at least to me, and after years of hunting for a lost link) that Huna was very old even in ancient times, and that it had spread far and wide, with early sages in India being initiated, but with the secret lore kept veiled by them so that the truths were either lost or badly garbled and retained only in symbol ideas. Reincarnation was the best understood, but instead of a few for each of the three spirits of man as he rises from one level of consciousness to the next, it was pulled and stretched to such a limitless number of reincarnations (for a single unit spirit) that this “wheel of rebirth” could almost never be stopped in its turning. The Aumakua was vaguely recognized as part of the one self man, but was classed as “real”, and as such, it remained ever high and aloof, needing no part in evolution, learning or growth. It just hovered there free of the “wheel” and of “karma” until the lower man spirit was able to attain “union” with it – after which the lower man vanished into thin air and the Aumakua just went on as before in the state of being “real”. Yoga originally contained much Huna, but lost it, even while retaining the idea of the aka sha substance which was the aka of Huna, and using the symbol of the spider’s web strands in the “thread souls”, and its function as a “net” to catch the unwary. The “knots” in early Yoga were knots in the aka cord reaching to the Aumakua, in all probability, and the mana of Huna became an amazingly changed “prana”. Brahmanism and the Vedas got mixed into Yoga badly. Then, in about 500 B.C., Buddhism came along as a protest against the endless number of reincarnations. Gautama seems to have learned something of the Huna idea of the “Grace” of the Aumakua which stands ready to help the graduation process of the Aunihipili and Auhane. That he saw it clearly, is to be doubted. If he did, he kept the old vow of secrecy and divulged the inner meanings only to a selected few, as Gospel Jesus did to his disciples. If not, he satisfied himself with the “real” and almost unchanging “Aumakua” and warped his theory around to match. He preached that the lower one spirit man could, by right living and acting, make the “union” with his Aumakua at the end of any incarnation. This “union” with the Aumakua practically annihilated the lesser man as he was absorbed into the Aumakua or a state of such vast “realness” that it amounted to nothingness, or Nirvana. The reform doctrine had an amazing impact on the religions current at the time. Kings and beggars joined the order of the yellow robe, gave up work and desire for anything, and set their faces toward Nirvana while marching stoutly over all the wreckage of the obligations and family life which they had abjured, and in doing so, planted the seeds of the downfall of the Order. (This is all beautifully related in your copy of Dr. Larson’s book, Religion of the Occident, so check it there.)

WHAT WE NEED JUST HERE, however, is evidence that the knowledge of reincarnation was a part of Christianity – the Christianity we are valuing so highly because it contains in the Huna word code the information about the Huna concept of the “Graduation through Grace” mechanism to help one escape the “wheel”.

HRA Dr. Larson (how proudly I write this) writes on page 288 of his ROTO book, “And beyond all this we must note again that certain elements in the Gospels were Buddhist and not Essen-Pythagorean at all, of which the most important was the substitution of mendicant communism for the self dependent community. We know that Asia minor teemed with Buddhist proselytizers in the first century, and that almost no one could have been immune from their propaganda. We know also that the Pythagorean societies differed from the Buddhist primarily in that the former were organizations of working and self reliant communists while the latter, living in idleness, depended upon gifts and beggery. The Gospel Jesus is far more Buddhist than Essene.”

That there was a knowledge of reincarnation in inner circles of Christianity is seen from the writings of Basilides, an Alexandrian, of early in the second century. (See pages 532 and on, in ROTO.) Valentius quotes him as writing, “The soul, having sinned before in another life, endures punishment in this…” Gospel Jesus said, “Unless ye be born again, etc.” Reincarnation was known. The Buddhist “escape” to Nirvana was a muddled version of the Huna teaching that the graduation was NOT an escape, but an orderly progression in growth through “Grace” at the end. MFL