GREETINGS. THIS IS MAX FREEDOM LONG SPEAKING.
In our study of Huna, the ancient system of the SECRET, we are drawing our information from several sources. When I was a young man I went to Hawaii and began to hear stories of what the kahunas were doing. I had majored in Psychology at school after becoming converted to Theosophy. But before that, as a high school student in a small Colorado town, I had taken a look at all the religions I could find listed in the Encyclopaedia.
Some of you may also have been brought up to accept one religion and to go to one church or synagogue — be told that it was a sin to disbelieve what you were taught. I happened to be a Baptist. That was just by chance. But I was also a boy given to much curiosity and THAT was something rather universal. Curiosity will kill the cat of a boy of any religion, be it one of the old and time honored ones dating back to Moses, or one of the new religions of the New Thought school.
I wanted to know a lot of things. I wanted to know WHY the Baptists, to whom I belonged, were right and all the others wrong. I tried to talk to our preacher about my desire to know, and he was horrified. Everyone who was on the right side of the fence KNEW that we were right! I might just as well have questioned the existence of God and the fact that Jesus, who was said to be anointed or “Christed” (from the Greek.) and died on the cross to save man from the taint of original sin — the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden — the sin that I never could understand WHY it should be visited on people of my later generation. Well, as you may guess, I got no change out of our Baptist Minister. He was greatly agitated and prayed for me to have faith.
I had equally bad luck with the Methodist and Presbyterian preachers. The Mormons were better in some ways. They were filled with zeal, but I couldn’t accept Joseph Smith’s tablets of gold which he translated by the use of two small stones… producing The Book Of Mormon. I thanked my informant and bowed out. The Catholic Priest was best of all. He gave me a fine account of the Church from its inception, BUT ended by insisting that, as the Church had now given me the correct doctrine, I must join it or I would be LOST. I tried to argue, but to no avail. So I thanked him and went on my way.
I studied Science and Health and saw how all was unreal… but I was still unable to accept it. I still wanted to know why we must be saved from the sins of Adam. Then I chanced to meet a bewhiskered old Atheist and told him my trouble. He smiled and said, “My boy, you have run into the thing that all religion is based upon. You have run into the thing which has caused men to make war on one another for centuries. You have run into the thing which has caused men to become hermits, or to allow themselves to be broken on the wheel of the Inquisition rather than to change. You HAVE RUN INTO DOGMA. Start looking for the dogmas upon which any religion is built, and you will then begin to understand how religions were put together. Some man — some fellow who is supposed to have a ’gift’ — has a vision or an inspiration, or he makes up a yarn out of whole cloth. He tells it to people as the last word in TRUTH, and after a while they come to believe him. He has established his DOGMA. He proceeds to write a book. And anything that gets into a book is crystallized and becomes a TRUTH or Dogma. Once it is accepted as a fact, you can count your religion all set. People begin to pass on the dogmas to their children, and it becomes a great sin to doubt the dogmas… The story of Adam and Eve and the Fall is a piece of Folk Lore. There are two main versions of it. But once it got into a book, it became God’s own truth, and you denied it at the risk of being churched. Don’t let anyone blinded by his own belief in a set of dogmas try to teach you. He can’t see beyond his beliefs. Get into the source books and examine them. See for yourself what always happens — a belief or dogma is invented and accepted. It then is built on and built on and built on. Don’t let anyone fool you, boy. It is ALL DOGMA and invention, and it is all man made. No so called ‘revelation’ will agree with any other ‘revelation’. Don’t accept any one of them.”
I later came to think that Theosophy was rather logical in the belief in many incarnations, and in that respect, I became a Theosophist. But — to get back to my experience in Hawaii and the tales of what the kahunas were doing, let me continue.
I heard that they did a lot of magic, but, most of all, that in time just recently past, they had fire-walked on red-hot lava as it overflowed from a volcano. I talked with two old Hawaiians who had seen it done… I didn’t know it at the time, but at last I had run into something that may or may not have originated with a dogma, but which WORKED. I decided to look into the matter and eventually went to the curator of the Bishop Museum of Natural History in Honolulu and asked him whether or not there was any truth in the reported fire-walking.
His name was Dr. Brigham, and he was heavy with scientific honors — a great scientist — and he looked like Santa Claus! When he had heard me out, he said, “Yes, they used to do fire-walking in my early days here in Hawaii.” He went on then to tell me how he had walked across red-hot lava and burned off his heavy mountain boots, while the old kahunas had crossed barefooted. No one was burned. No one had treated their feet with anything. All that the old natives did was to pray to “The Goddess of the Sky” for protection from the heat… and it was given.
NOW I was confronted by something which was NOT all dogma! Here was a very DIFFERENT thing. Here were native priests of a kind who prayed to some Higher Being, and who got results. I continued my questioning and learned that they also did remarkable HEALING.
“What have these people got?” I demanded. Dr. Brigham said, “A system of psychology and religion which is pure enough and close enough to its source — whatever that may have been — to work for them. If you want to study it and try to learn the secret behind what they did, always watch for three things… some unit of CONSCIOUSNESS guiding some UNIT OF FORCE, and making it work through some form of substance. It will be very scientific when you find it. I have tried for forty years to find out how they do things, but the secret lore is very sacred to the native priests, or was before they died out under the impact of the modern civilization. They would not tell.”
So, it came about that I started trying to learn the secret lore. Years passed before I found a code hidden in their language which told me what they believed and how they used it for healing ……………… for fire-walking ………… for looking into the future to a certain extent ………………. for slow healing and instant healing ………… and for several other things which we need not list here.
I realize that I am treading on many toes. Most of us have been born into dogmatic beliefs and have thoughtlessly accepted them as the one and only TRUE set of beliefs. The human animal has one strange characteristic: once he has taken a dogma to his heart, he ceases to be a man and becomes — at least in that respect — a MULE. He will balk at giving up a Dogma. A mule has no sex, and this goes for the ladies as well as the men, even more so. They will refuse steadfastly to listen to all arguments against their beliefs, no matter how you approach them.
Dr. Brigham, as it eventually turned out, was not inclusive enough. He might have raised his sights or used a scatter gun when he said we would have to watch for consciousness to work with a force, through a substance. We have in Huna THREE forms of consciousness, working with THREE forms of force, and using, in addition to the usual physical substance of the body, a strange and invisible substance — that of the three shadowy bodies of the man. But of one thing he was correct in his anticipation: when we found these things, they would be “scientific”. I grant you that the men of science have not yet quite caught up with these things, but they are of the kind science will acknowledge once it can get the tools to measure them. Scientists have to be able to measure everything, you know, or get it into a test tube.
The language CODE used by the Polynesians was preserved in the many little islands of the Pacific for at least 2,000 years. We know this and set that length of time because they brought with them all the main stories which are found in the Bible. That is, in the Old Testament. They had the story of the Creation and of Adam and Eve and the Garden. They had a fine account of Noah and the Flood. They even had Jonah and the Whale. But, what they did NOT have was any trace of the story of Jesus or Mary or of the Crucifixion.
When the Missionaries arrived in Hawaii in 1820 they couldn’t understand HOW the natives had come by the Old Testament stories, and finally decided that the Devil must have told them. It could not have been the earlier explorers, for if they had told of Adam and Eve, they certainly would have told of Jesus and his disciples. It is evident to us that they left the lands in or near Egypt at a time prior to the general knowledge of the Great Drama which was had in some way from the kahunas and mistaken for a real account of a real man. The Egyptians, some long time before that, had preserved in their glyphs or picture writing the information that they were “scientific” in that they, too, knew the three kinds of consciousness, three kinds of vital force (or mana), and the visible and invisible substance used by consciousness when working with the forces — the three shadowy bodies to match the three “selves” and their three “manas”.
The picture writing that has come down to us from the temples and tombs had already been evolved to the stage at which a single glyph stood for a letter, but to be sure the sentence would be understood, they put at the end of it a glyph which represented the main idea. You spelled out “mother” and then made a glyph picture of a woman to go with the spelled out “mother”. In this way, from their writing, we have their glyph as in the very ancient time, for the three selves or spirits of man. The bird has always been a code word for a spirit, and the stork in particular. So, we have in early Egypt three storks collapsed together to make almost one, but standing for the three UNITED selves of the man. For his mana, the code has always been “water” (Remember our grasshopper who could produce water from its mouth when caught, and which was the symbol of the low or subconscious self?) This glyph was not of just one wavy line, but of THREE, one above the other. And for the three shadowy bodies of the man they used three umbrellas, one for each of the three selves.
The language code, when I discovered after years of work that there was one and began to try to break it, was a double code. For instance, they had a word for a normal ghost which meant a spirit of three waters. The “waters” meant that the ghost had all three of its manas, but it took me a very long time to find out what “waters” stood for. It was a code within a code. By the way, the kahunas had no written language in early Egypt. Nor is there any writing in the pyramids.
The Great Pyramid is supposed to have been built to serve as a tomb for a Pharaoh, but while contemporary tombs have much writing in them and burial furnishings, the interior seems to have been designed as a SYMBOL of the THREE SELVES. At the bottom of the structure and well below the ground surface, we find the “Well”. It is a small chamber and is supposed to serve as a drainage sump. From it leading upward is a passage that connects with the Grand Gallery, which leads to the “King’s Chamber” at the top. But half way up a second passage leads off to a smaller room known as the “Queen’s Chamber”, and which is just right for the middle self in this symbology. The largest room, which is reached by a very narrow opening at the end of the Grand Gallery, contains an open sarcophagus in which no body was ever placed. Well we may ask WHY? Did they symbolize the death and burial of the man as having something to do with his High Self? Was the spaciousness of the King’s Chamber the silent evidence of the greater power and glory of the self called by the kahunas, “The Utterly Trustworthy Parental Spirit”? Did the low self room, buried deep in the rock beneath the pyramid show the hidden nature of the subconscious or low self? Did the larger chamber next above stand for the middle self? Did the passages leading aways upward to the highest room stand for the aka cords that make the connection for us between the three selves?
In this great monument, we find no effort made to represent the three manas or vital forces, or to picture the shadowy substance. It might be that if we understood the symbology in the Grand Gallery we would have these items back. But, given the three selves and the shadowy cords, we can guess at the rest.
From any point of view, the primary dogma of the High Self stands out here as the most logical and believable. It gives us God as something brought down to within our reach. Above the High Self there may be still higher and higher Beings, but for our purposes and for our immediate help, it is enough that we know that the High Self is there — that it is a PART of ourselves, and that it stands ready to help us whenever we learn to do our parts in the calling.
For centuries we have known dimly that there was a Higher Being. This is the basic and true dogma of religions. We have prayed to God under many names and in many languages, and all prayers have gone to the High Selves because there was no place else for them to go — no mechanism except the mana flow along the shadowy cord, carrying our thought-pictures. (The fervent FAITH has caused clear pictures of our needs to be made and we have believed that our prayers would be answered, in many cases, without knowing Huna.)
In the great Drama of Initiation we have the figure representing the High Self declaiming the Secret Lore. He says, “According to your FAITH, so shall it be unto you.”
Men have prayed without faith and have received an answer which was made up of two parts — the picture of the need, and the picture of it continuing. These two pictures cancel each other and we get nothing. Or we get a little more or less of what we ask. Men have tried endlessly to explain this failure. They have made sacrifices of all kinds, but they have not known that what we must give as our offering is MANA. It is the mana we accumulate by breathing more deeply and by commanding our low selves to gather an extra charge. It is this mana which we consciously offer with the picture of the desired thing, or condition, to the High Self as our prayer. We furnish the thought-form-seed. We water it with mana (water is the code word for mana.) The High Self begins to materialize or grow the seed. Daily, in full confidence, we send mana and renew our picture. Then, one fine day the “Answer” suddenly is there.
(Now for the discussions.)
Questions and Answers
In discussing the things of this short lecture, I suggest that you refer back to the earlier talks and be reminded of the Huna prayer methods.
Q. Was there not, a number of years ago, a PREDICTIVE system worked out by enthusiasts to show that the Great Pyramid was the embodiment of a prophesy of the “Last Days”?
A. Yes. What was called “the pyramid inch”, was calculated and the Grand Gallery was measured inch by inch along the floor. Notches and markings along the Gallery were said to match events from the time of Jesus to the date of World War 1, and its end was predicted by markings close to the opening of the passage into the King’s Chamber. There was much speculation about what would happen as the inches were measured off along the chamber floor. Some said that when the inches (each inch at that point of measurement was supposed to represent a year) reached the sarcophagus. The Thousand Years of Peace, under divine rule was expected. There might be a Christian “Second Coming”. A Millennium.
There was a large book published giving all the measurements and charts and predictions. Behind the activity was a group of English people, and it became more or less a cult. I remember following the arguments and pouring over the book. I watched for the dates and… nothing happened. The years inched across the floor of the King’s Chamber, and came to the back wall. Still nothing had happened but more wars. Some efforts were made to change the measurements a little, but that did not help. Little by little we gave up hoping. It had been a false dogma. The Great — the wonderful Pyramid — had let us down. Today the big book is a curiosity to be found only in used book stores or on the shelves of some misguided student who has ceased to hope.
Q. Is there any way to be sure that we have accumulated a charge of mana before we offer it as a sacrifice or gift to the High Self?
A. Yes, it was found that the pendulum would measure the size of the mana charge. If you are one of those who can use the pendulum, hold it over the palm of your left hand (if you are right handed) and ask it to show you by a circular swing how much mana you have aboard. It will show by making a small circle with its swing. (You must remember that the low self is causing the pendulum to swing. A pendulum may be said to act as a means of communication between the low and middle self.) Now begin to breathe rhythmically in sets of four deeper and slower breaths, EXPECTING the low self to take on more mana by burning more blood sugar. It knows how if you set it to work. After about four sets of four breaths, take up your pendulum and ask again for the measurement of the mana charge. In most cases you will find the circle made by the swinging pendulum very much larger. Offer the mana to the High Self and send with it the mental picture of the thing for which you wish to pray — as if you had already been given it. Give thanks that your prayer is being materialized by the High Self and that the “seed” has sprouted and has started to grow. After you have finished and broken off your prayer action, take up your pendulum and measure yourself again for the mana charge. You will find that it is all expended or you may be able to get no measurement at all and the pendulum will hang quietly, not moving. You will, of course, quickly build up your mana charge again, or you can breathe a few times and charge up to your normal level. Try some of these things. They will give you faith in the method. My aloha. MFL
