GREETINGS. Again this is Max Freedom Long speaking.
IN THIS SERIES OF SHORT TALKS we are considering the ancient HUNA or “Secret” System which has been traced back to early Egypt, and which spread from there around much of the world, always being in the hands of initiated priests, but with the inner or really secret teachings eventually lost. It was best preserved in the islands of Polynesia, and was recovered there, at least in large part, during the past century.
In the first talk I told you that we would study the TEN ELEMENTS which Huna tells us make up the MAN (And the WOMAN, TOO – and don’t you forget it.)
To review: THE FIRST ELEMENT in man is the body, then we count THREE separate and independent SELVES OR SPIRITS, who make use of the body during life. We also count three ghost bodies which are invisible but made of very fine material and are practically indestructible. These surround the three SELVES during life — surround also the body (except for the one be longing to the High Self, whose “shadowy body” is just attached to the dense body by means of a “silver cord” — a cord made of the same substance as its “shadowy body” (AKA it is called in Huna.) When we die we leave the dead body and continue to live in the shadowy bodies, invisible to the eye, but still very real.
Lastly, we count three grades of vital force, called in Huna, MANA. Each of the three spirits takes its share of the mana from the physical body where it is created from the food we eat and the air we breathe. Each SELF uses its mana in a different way and for a different purpose. We will come to that in a later talk, but in passing, let me say that the High Self can use its mana to make changes in physical matter, as in the control of heat in fire-walking. It works the miracles for us. In the great mystery play of initiation which was later mistakenly supposed to be real history, the leading character explains, “Not I, but the Father. He doeth the works.”
This is pretty dry. Take a few deep breaths and get awake again so I can tell you more about the shadowy body. It is made of such fine material that it cannot be seen, but every time we think a thought, we take some of this substance which surrounds the body and interpenetrates it, and make it into a microscopic THOUGHT-FORM. The low self does this automatically. It ties these thought-forms together in strings and stores them in the shadowy body AS MEMORIES. If something frightens or impresses you greatly, it will cause very large and enduring thought-forms to be made, and these we can easily remember for years. But the average little string of invisible forms, such as one makes in reading bits from the morning paper are stored away and the low self soon forgets where it put them.
AN EXPERIMENT can be performed at your leisure to prove that a big thought-form string is more easily remembered than a small one. The thought-forms are made by the use of the mana by the low or subconscious self and mana is made by breathing more deeply and slowly — that is, you can make a larger charge of it and can then get the low self to use it. Select a few lines of verse to memorize. Time yourself and take five minutes just as you are to memorize the selected lines, say the first verse of a poem. Then take some slow, deep breaths — take four at a time, pause a few seconds, and repeat until you get charged up — usually this can be done in about four of the four-breath series. When charged, take five minutes to memorize the second verse of the poem. Good. Next day see which verse you recall best.
A young friend of mine who learned slowly, was taught to breathe the Huna way to help him in his studies. It worked and soon he was “inhaling” all his lessons. One day he was trying to teach his dog to sit up and shake hands, but without visible results. “Oh, rats!” he exclaimed when I questioned him. “Spotty will never learn. I can’t get him to inhale his lessons. He just pants all the time, and never learns a thing!” My former friend, Dr. Rice, who had wonderful success reforming wayward boys and girls, once told me that he had never failed once if he could get his charges to breathe more deeply and correctly. If YOU want to understand what I am trying to tell you with this tape, don’t sit there holding your breath, falling to sleep, and not remembering a thing I say. BREATHE IN EVERY WORD, and you’ll have something useful to remember – and USE.
Remember the Huna adage, “No mana: no lasting memory.”
The reason a hypnotist’s words of suggestion work is that he puts mana into the thought-forms of the words as he plants them in the mind of the relaxed and slow breathing subject. It isn’t the “will” of the hypnotist, it is the MANA. Sleep-suggestion by means of phonograph records gets poor results because there is no mana in the words which are mechanically spoken. In Yoga, the valuable part is the full breathing and accumulating of prana or mana, but most Yoga students don’t know what to do with the extra mana when they have accumulated it. Yoga started with Huna centuries ago, and then forgot what it was all about.
Originally, Yoga taught one how to get into touch with one’s own High Self whenever desired, to give it a gift of extra mana, and then get it to give some miraculous help. Or, one just gave the gift of mana as an offering of deep love and devotion. The High Self is “The god within” and deserves all the love and devotion you can give it. It is your heavenly Father and Mother combined. You are the beloved Son “in whom I am well pleased”… if you have been behaving yourself.
The subconscious or low or animal or body SELF is also to be loved deeply and cared for. To IT, YOU — the middle self — are its Father and Mother. It looks to you for love and understanding and guidance — for help when it gets into trouble. It serves you ever so willingly and faithfully, and will use its instinctive abilities and talents in most amazing ways in answer to your requests – if you only will get acquainted with it and learn how to work with it. It is like a bashful and silent child hiding in most of us, and when we begin to try to get acquainted with it, it has a tendency to get behind you and hide like a child hiding in its mother’s skirts. These days, if you are a girl and wear a mini-skirt, of course, your low self may not be able to hide from you so well.
The best way I know to get acquainted with your low self is to teach it to use a pendulum and hold little yes-no-doubtful conversations with you through the ways in which it can swing the pendulum. “Yes” is a vertical swing of the pendulum. “No” is a horizontal swing. “Doubtful or I do not know” is a diagonal swing. “Good” is a clockwise circle swing. Bad is a counterclockwise circle swing. Remember that the low self can help you to speak words, but of itself, it cannot speak. The pendulum allows it to talk to you with the only words it can – symbols. Tie your ring to a five-inch thread and it will be a pendulum ready for use. But don’t expect results when you start asking the low self to talk with you. Give it time to get over its bashfulness and learn the new trick. But usually it will learn in a few patient sittings and after that will talk happily. BUT don’t ask it to predict future events and then believe what it says, for it cannot see the future and will only make wild guesses in answering. Usually, it will give you the answer that it thinks you would like. Only the High Self can see into the future, and to get that information from it is indeed a fine art.
Later on you may want to work with your low self to dowse for water, or oil, or to map dowse for lost things or persons. It also can make fine Psychometric Analysis readings for you, once you have taught it the code it is to use via the pendulum and the simple Biometer. Don’t underestimate the ability of the Younger Self, and at the same time do not ask it to do something that only the High Self can do.
Let us get back to the subject of the three shadowy or aka bodies, for an understanding of them is very necessary to round out our knowledge of just what uses we can make of the ten elements in ourselves and in all human beings. The shadow body is an amazing thing, especially the one belonging to the low self. We modems have borrowed from Theosophy the “double” and the “astral body”. We indulge in loose talk about “auras”, seldom having a very definite idea of what is meant.
It must have been very difficult for the ancient sages to find a good code word or symbol to use to stand for the shadowy body of the low self — to stand for a thing which had so many functions and uses. In the end they selected the code symbol of an umbrella for the shadowy bodies of the three spirits, and when we read about the shadowy body in the hieroglyphics or picture writing of early Egypt, we find that the picture of a raised or fully opened umbrella stands for the aka or shadowy body. Why was the umbrella such a good code symbol? Because the umbrella casts a shadow, and that is something that can be seen and still is invisible in its own way. A shadow is “something”. So is the shadowy body — a something real but not to be seen or caught in the hand. For the three shadowy bodies of the three selves, the Egyptians wrote three umbrella glyphs in a row. Their name for the shadowy body was just “shadow”. It was the “ka” in Egyptian, or the “a-ka”, as the glyph left the vowels out of the written word and these had to be supplied by the reader. In Polynesia, where the art of writing was lost, the full word was preserved, and it is “aka”.
The umbrella has a handle to support it, and this handle is a very important part of the code symbol, for it indicates the cord of shadowy body substance that runs from the aka of the low self to the aka of the High Self. Turn your umbrella up side down and you have then the symbol of the “silver cord” running upward from the low to the High.
All this would sound rather foolish to us were it not that this “silver cord” of aka substance is our means of contact with our High Selves. It is the telephone line we use when we call up to ask for help or just to say, “I love you.” The telephone wire or cord has mana for its electricity, and mana flows from the low to the High Self and back again when we use the mystic phone in prayer or worship.
The same substance, aka, is given the code name of “sticky” (or pili spelled p-i-l-i ) by the Polynesian inheritors and preservers of Huna. And that describes an almost amusing characteristic of the substance. When you shake hands with someone, your aka body sticks to theirs, as if you had stuck your wads of gum together and pulled them apart, pulling out long threads of gum. These threads of aka substance will stretch and stretch, and under certain circumstances, a number of them will serve as a phone line between two people and enable them to communicate telepathically. Telepathy is the conversation of the two people along the telephone wire of aka substance. It is the same mechanism as is conversation with the High Self… And this leads us to something to be well “inhaled” and made into a good memory. It is that ALL PRAYER IS TELEPATHIC, and ALL TELEPATHY IS MADE UP of messages sent in picture form by the low self.
If your wife sends you a telepathic message to bring home a pound of butter, the low self transmits the message in picture symbols, NOT in words, for it cannot use WORDS. It gives you a picture of your wife and follows that with a picture of her wanting butter. You don’t know HOW you get the impression, but you know you got it. You bring home the butter.
All of our prayers are given first to the low self. It changes our wants into pictures, and sends the pictures telepathically, along the aka cord, to the High Self.
If you picture yourself as in perfect health and impress that on the low self as the thing to send as a “want” to your High Self, it will make a picture of you in perfect health, and will send the picture. The way the High Self answers the prayer is to “make real” or “materialize” the picture for you. This is the secret of secrets in Huna. It is what it is ALL ABOUT.
But get this. The picture of perfect health must NOT be one that includes your sickness. If you pray, ‘Heal my illness, ” the low self will make a picture of you sick and miserable and send it for the prayer. With it will go a picture of you wanting something, perhaps still another picture of you NOT being sick. The result is a muddle and nothing is given to the High Self to use to change your condition.
In the great drama of Huna initiation, Jesus instructed, “Ask in faith, believing…” etc. Modem New Thought got the idea and teaches us to use the positive affirmation, “I am perfectly well and strong and comfortable. ” Dr. Coue’ taught the positive picture in his invaluable formula, “Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better. ” He pictured the getting well process. But better still would be, “Every day in every way, I have perfect health.” And, we must have faith. We must believe that we are getting perfect health. We must hold the thought of ourselves perfectly well. If we don’t, we send a sick picture inevitably to the High Self to spoil the good picture of perfect health we have already sent up in prayer. It is like pulling yourself up by your boot straps, but it is also the difference between the prayer which gets answered and the one that does not.
Making the picture of perfect health must be done with the use of the mana to get a lasting memory or thought-form picture to keep recalling and sending frequently to the High Self as your prayer. Make and memorize your picture with breathing to collect the mana to give the picture strength enough to hold together while the High Self materializes it into actuality for you. Make your picture as if “inhaling a lesson”, and don’t be like the dog, Spotty, who just sits there and pants.
Tell your low self to send the picture and plenty of mana to the High Self — like a telepathic message. It knows how, so just set it to work. Repeat your prayer action at least once a day, and keep at it until the answer is given. Have faith. Tell yourself perfect health is already given on the level of the High Self and is already real. Live in the picture. FEEL it. Keep your mind off your ills as off the Devil. You have now the key to real magic. It is yours to use if you will. Aloha MFL
Questions and Answers
Q. Was the idea of the silver cord and threads known also in early India?
A. Yes. In Yoga there was the practice of trying to generate a mana or prana force in the sacral region and make it move upward through the centers along the spine, then on up through the top of the head to the High Self. The secret knowledge got all distorted in time, but we still find in the earliest Yoga writings the mention of the “thread soul”, which was the low self. The Brahmins still wear the “sacred thread” around their necks, while this same thread idea appears in various other religions in the string of beads worn around the neck. Good Catholics wear a small chain around their necks with a small cross attached, and are very reluctant to remove it night or day. In ancient times there was much borrowing back and forth between religions.
Q. Did the early Egyptians know about the cord or threads?
A. Yes. In some of the drawings in the tombs we see a spider pictured hanging by a thread of web above the mummy case. The spider was the symbol of the aka or shadowy thread at its best. In the outer teachings it was said that one had to climb a thread of spider web in order to get up to heaven. The cord that goes between the body and the High Self is made up of many threads, these forming a cord — the “silver cord” mentioned once in the Old Testament of the Bible. In Huna the web with the spider in the center, and with web threads reaching out in all directions, was the favorite symbol used to describe the mechanism. In Tibet there was once a whole system of belief developed in which the universe was said to be like a web, and the souls of men like tiny spiders dotted here and there over the vast web. The Aboriginals in Australia still have a sacred “string” which is part of their magic kit. In Easter Island the umbilical cord was the symbol, and such cords were carefully preserved after birth. In Polynesia the word for low self had several meanings, one of which was “sticky”. This refers to the aka threads, which, like the thread of web exuded by a spider, is at first sticky and will adhere to anything — thus making it possible to hang a web between twigs or in the fine space behind a picture.
Q. Why should we send mana to the High Self when we ask for something?
A. The High Self draws from the body, through the silver cord, the mana it ordinarily needs to live in its shadowy body. But, when we ask it to make changes in our so-dense Earthy world, or the conditions in it, the secret teaching is that much more mana is needed — just as when we breathe more strongly to get ready to “inhale a lesson”. We accumulate the needed mana and send it to the High Self to use. Of the three selves, only the low self has a physical body capable of creating the life force or mana from the food and water and air we consume. The prayer of the Great Drama, “Give us this day our daily bread”, should read, “Let us give YOU each day YOUR daily bread — or mana”. The Chinese knew that the spirits of the dead have but little mana, and so the ancestral spirits were fed — outwardly with food placed on the graves. The inward or secret meaning of this was lost. In Egypt the food of the gods or High Selves was symbolized by honey, and honey was secreted by the bee — so they had a sacred bee in the pictures painted in the tombs. Mana, when accepted by the High Self was honey. The symbol of the High Self was LIGHT. Its symbol was the SUN.
