The Reiki Story

Reiki is a laying on of hands, a healing system of incomparable ease and power.  What it can do and how it can do it is what I’d like to discuss here and now but, to fully appreciate Reiki, it is first necessary to know where it came from and how it reached the West.  The story spans almost all of the written records of humanity and the healing system itself is older than any written account.  I have given a great deal of my time and energy to discovering Reiki origins, through research and reading, but still many gaps remain.  Much pertinent information has never been translated into English and even more information has never been placed into print in any language.  The traditional Reiki story begins in the 1800s, but Reiki was ancient even then.

 

Information before written records has been ‘channelled’, but while I must admit that I view such information as considerably speculative, it is nonetheless interesting and highly though provoking.  While unverifiable, the material is too fascinating to be overlooked and some Reiki Masters believe it to be highly valuable.  In Diane Stein’s Dreaming the Past, Dreaming the Future (1990), psychic Laurel Steinhice described the twelve source planets that were original colonisers of the earth.  Most of these are apparently located in the Pleiades, with a few in the star system of Sirus and Orion.  Laurel also states that people did not evolve on earth, we were brought here from a variety of planetary cultures and a number of channels are now also describing them in their own writings.

 

In 1991 Diane asked Laurel for channelling about the origins of Reiki.  She described Reiki as having come from the same planet that also brought the many armed gods and goddesses to earth, the root culture of what became pre-patriarchal India.  The India god we know today as Shiva, female at that time, was responsible for bringing Reiki here and s/he wants to be remembered for the gift.  When the human body for this planet was designed, Reiki was incorporated into the genetic coding as a birthright of all people (Steinhice, L. 1991). 

 

Reiki is a part of every one of us.  It was once universal and was never meant to be lost.  Children of the early earth, in a civilisation we call Mu today, received Reiki I training at the beginning of junior school.  They received Reiki II at secondary school.  Reiki III, the Teacher/Master’s training was required for educators and was also available to anyone who wanted it.  When the people of its root culture left the mainland of Mu to colonise what is now India and Tibet, Reiki continued with them, though Mu was eventually lost.  The earth changes that destroyed first Mu and then Atlantis resulted in severe cultural disorganisation, causing the healing system to remain the knowledge of only a few.  When, in the nineteenth century, a Japanese man sought the origins of Jesus’ and the Buddha’s method of healing, he found them in the ancient remnants of Shiva’s early culture, in the esoteric teaching of India.

 

During the middle of the Meiji era in Japan, which covers the mid-1800s, Dr Mikao Usui was the Dean of a small Christian University in Kyoto.  One day, during a discussion with some of his students, Usui was asked if he believed literally in the Bible.  When he replied that he did, his students reminded him of the instant healing of Christ.  The students mentioned that in the Bible, Christ states, “You will do as I have done, and even greater things.”  “If this is so,” they stated, “why aren’t there many healers in the world today performing the same acts as Christ? In addition, he tells the apostles to heal the sick and raise the dead.  If this is true,” the students said, “please teach us the methods.”  Usui was stunned.  In traditional Japanese style, he was bound by his honour as Dean, to be able to answer their questions.  On that day, Usui resigned his position and determined to find the answers to this great mystery.

 

As most of his teachers had been American missionaries and America was predominantly a Christian country, the story suggests that he went to the University of Chicago and studied for a long period.  However, this part of the Reiki story is up for grabs, because Reiki Master William Rand (USA), while searching for records, found that there are no records of attendance at the University of Chicago in the name of Mikao Usui (Rand, W. 1991, p2).  It would be easy to speculate that the Christian aspects of the story were indeed added in the West, to make the startling power of the Reiki healing system acceptable to Americans.  As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t matter to me whether he attended college in the West or not, it’s the rest of the story that really is inspiring.

 

Dr Usui realised at some point that Buddha was also know to have performed incredible healing, so he determined to return (?) to Japan and see if he could find some “new” old information about more of the instantaneous types of physical healings.  The parallels between Buddhism and the early teachings of the historical Jesus (rather than religious Christianity or Church doctrine) are fascinating and require further discussion.  Here I will divert slightly from the story of Reiki to explore them briefly.  Buddha, the great saviour of India, was born in the year 620BC, near the Nepal border.  He was the son of a king and his birth name was Gautama Siddhartha.  The prince was kept entirely innocent of suffering in the world, living in an enclosed palace and not permitted to go outside of it.  Upon reaching adulthood he desired to see the real word so strongly that he disobeyed his father’s wishes and escaped from his golden  prison.  For the first time he saw old age, illness, death, poverty and suffering and it awakened in him his karmic heritage to relieve all people of pain.

 

Forsaking his wealth and his much beloved young wife, Gautama Siddhartha chose the path of a homeless wanderer.  He lived under trees, begged for his food and meditated on how to prevent suffering.  Seated under a fig tree in meditation one day, he was shown the way to heal all people and this revelation under the Bodhi tree was the first Enlightenment.  The Sakyamuni Buddha discovered that attachment to worldly things, and even people with the greed and negativity that such attachments inevitably cause, are the source of human suffering.  Action based upon these attachments produces karma, both positive and negative, that holds the person’s spirit to the earth plane.  Karma causes people to be reborn again and again, for the purpose of resolving the situations.  Rebirth and living on the earth are the source of human suffering, and yet karma cannot be cleared except by reincarnation in a human body.

 

The answer to this paradox, how to resolve karma and end the cycle of reincarnation and rebirth, is the essence of Buddhist teaching.  This philosophy, which accepts the Gods and Goddesses of whatever culture it is practised in, has had a profound impact on every major religion, including Christianity.  Buddhist teaching is based upon the principle of compassion for all living things, no aggression towards people or animals and loving non-attachment while helping others.  To the Buddhist, healing means much more than healing the body, as the mind and emotions must also be healed and healing must first of all be spiritual.  The world is seen as illusion, a creation of the mind derived from the void.  Many of the parables and stories found in later Christianity are taken directly from Buddhist teachings – including the Parable of the Mustard Seed, the story of the Prodigal Son, the Sermon on the Mount and the Temptation in the Desert by Evil.  (Again I would like to acknowledge that it doesn’t really matter where the stories come from as long as we learn the lesson they teach us.) 

 

The Buddha’s discovery of the path to enlightenment made possible the enlightenment of others.  A number of Buddhas followed Gautama Siddhartha and a number of beings known as Bodhisattvas.  A Bodhisattva (saviour) is a person who has attained enlightenment and is therefore no longer required to reincarnate.  Yet s/he returns to earth for the purpose of bringing others out of suffering and pain and into enlightenment, with him/her (giving us a helping hand on the way/path homewards to the source) eg Sri Swami Satchidananda and Paramahansa Yogananda and two of the most familiar female Bodhisattvas are Kwan Yin in China (called Kannon in Japan) and Tara in Tibet.  I, along with many others, believe that Mary and Jesus are further examples of Bodhisattvas.

 

Buddha and several of the Buddhas who followed him were called The Great Physicians (as Jesus was later called).  So much emphasis was placed on healing, both physical and spiritual, in the early Buddhist practice that it became the norm later to discourage it as a distraction from the Enlightenment Path.  What is today called Reiki was known in India from the time of Gautama Siddhartha.  It was partly described in the Buddhist Sutras, but more likely it was transmitted through oral teaching.  Several of the early Buddhist scriptures describe the effects of spiritual healing – freedom from suffering and reincarnation in a “pure Land” where enlightenment can be gained – rather than the actual healing methods.  Rituals and prayers for calling upon the Buddha of Healing are described in several texts.

 

Concepts more familiar to the West of psychic technique, visualisation, initiation/attunement, meditative states and spiritual healing involving mind, emotions and body, indicate a form of Buddhism called Tantra or Vajrayana.  Tantra is a highly esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism that developed in Tibet.  It requires complete dedication and many years of psychic meditative training.  Tantra is known in the West mistakenly as sexual practice, instead its goal is union and oneness with all Being.  This union is personified by the visualised, not the actual sexual partner.  Two outgrowths of Tantric practice are the development of psychic abilities and healing skills.  The adept is taught to use these only when necessary, as they are distractions from the enlightenment process (Blofeld, J. 1970, p6-40).

 

Tibetan Buddhism also involves the concept of Tulkas, the reincarnation with retained previous life memory of certain high level adepts.  Today’s Dalai Lama is an example of a Tulka.  Some time after the death of a Dalai Lama, the monks of the order being to seek his reincarnation, which they identify by numerous signs and tests.  The new Lama, still a young child, is then taken to the monastery for training to resume the role he left in his past lifetime.  This is an important connection between mystical Buddhism and Jesus (Kersten, H. 1991, p86-91), which can also be explored more deeply.

 

Written material on Tantric Buddhism does not offer clear step-by-step descriptions of how to achieve the Path.  (Or should I say their path, as we all know there is only One Truth but many Paths.)  The material is meant only for adepts and is taught orally.  The manuscripts are carefully protected for fear of profanation and therefore are written to be deliberately obscure.  A teacher is required to unravel the mystical language and the teacher does so only to students deemed qualified and ready (Blofeld, J. 1970, p198-199).  Teachings are sometimes lost if the Teacher/Master does not accept students to whom they would pass them on.  Diane Stein, in her book Dreaming the Past, Dreaming the Future (1991) is convinced that lost practices can occasionally be regained by psychic rediscovery.  The Tibetan Tantra Lotus Sutra, a text written in the second or first century BC, offers the symbol formula for the technique of Reiki.

How then did this technique of Reiki healing reach Jesus in the Middle East?  According to Gellnan writer and researcher, Holger Kersten, in his fascinating book Jesus lived in India, Jesus was a reincarnated Bodhisattva, as described above – a Tulka.  His birth was awaited by members of a Buddhist order and the “Three Wise Men” followed the unusual astrological conjunction of 5BC to find him.  Buddhism had spread throughout the East by that time and there were Buddhist centres in  most Middle Eastern countries.

 

The child would have been two years of age at the time and in danger from Herod, who had received prophecies of an Essence Leader newborn who would challenge Roman rule.  An Essence Buddhist type monastery existed in Qumran near the caves that later housed the Dead Sea Scrolls.  As a mystical order and possibly even a Buddhist order, the Essence was aware of these prophecies.  Essence teachings included concepts of reincarnation and Karma, the immortality of the soul, compassionate peacefulness and simple living (Kersten, H. 1991 p106-108).  Recognising the Tulka they sought in the child Jesus, or perhaps summoned by the essences who recognised him, the “Wise Men” took the boy and his family East with them.  The child was raised and trained first in Egypt and then in India.  With access to Buddhist Mahayana and Vajrayana training, he returned to Jerusalem as an adult, a Buddhist adept and Reiki healer.  He was also a Bodhisattva.  Holger Kersten goes on to trace the remainder of Jesus’ life, providing logical argument for his survival of the crucifixion.  There are numerous mentions of him as Issa or Yuz Asaf in the Buddhist Sutras and as Ibn Yusfin in Islamic writings.  Most sources describe his past or note the crucifixion scars, making the identification unmistakable.

 

Jesus survived and lived a very long and well-respected life as a holy man in India (Kersten, 1991, p.150).  The graves of Mary, Mary Magdalene and Yuz Asaf (Jesus) are known and considered places of worship in Mark, Pakistan (Mary), Kashgar, India (Mary Magdalene) and India (Jesus).  The sites are clearly labelled (Kersten, 199, p186-187, p203-206).  Kersten cites 21 documents that describe Jesus’ residence in Kashmir, India, after the crucifixion plus numerous indicative place names.  Much of this scholarly information has been suppressed by the Christian Church, which reflects more the teaching of Paul than the Buddhist-influenced Jesus.  The historical Jesus is a fascinating figure, and his presence in the Reiki story is vindicated.  If he also trained others in the healing method – and the New Testament state that, at least, he trained his disciples – then Reiki reached a larger portion of the ancient world outside of India than may have been previously known.  It was probably lost from Christian doctrine through the intervention of Paul, who seems to have interpreted Christ’s teachings.  By the fifth century, the crucial concepts of rebirth and Karma were dropped from Church canon, and Jesus’ healing method, which could have helped so many, was lost to the developing West.  The healing remained active only with the Buddhist adepts, who used it but did not publicise its existence.

 

Mikao Usui returned to Japan and took residence in a Zen Buddhist monastery, where he found the texts describing the healing formula, which he now could read in their original Sanskrit.  The material did not include, however, information on how to activate the energy and make it work.  As has been stated, such obscuring of information in the Sutras was intentional, done to keep the often-powerful material from hands not ready to know and use it properly.  Hawaii Takata describes this: He went into studying the Sanskrit and when he later studied very hard to master it, he found a formula.  Just as plain as day.  Nothing hard, but very simple.  Like two and two equals four.  And so he said, ‘very well, I’ve found it.  But now I have to interpret this, because it was written 2500 years ago, ancient.  But I have to go through the test.’  (Takata, 1947, p4).  The test was a three week period of meditation, fasting and prayer on Mt Origami in Japan.  He chose his meditation site and piled 21 small stones in front of him to mark the time, throwing away one stone at the end of each day.  On the final morning of his quest, in the darkest hour just before dawn, Usui saw a projectile of light coming towards him.  His first response was to run from it, but then he thought again.  He decided to accept what was coming as the answer to his meditation, even if it resulted in his death.  The light struck his third eye and he lost consciousness for a time.  Then he saw “millions and millions of rainbow bubbles” (Takata, 1974, p66) and finally the Reiki symbols as if they were on a screen.  As he saw each of the symbols, he was given the information about each of them to activate the healing energy.  It was the first Reiki attunement, the psychic rediscovery of an ancient wisdom.

 

Mikao Usui left Mt Koriyama knowing how to heal as Buddha and Jesus had healed.  Walking down the mountain he experienced what is traditionally known as the four miracles.  First, he stubbed his toe walking, and instinctively sat and put his hands on it.  His hands became hot and the torn toe was healed.  Next, he reached a house that served pilgrims at the bottom of the mountain.  He asked for a full meal, not wise after 21 days fasting on water, but at it without discomfort.  Third, the woman serving the meal was afflicted with toothache and placing his hands on the sides of her face, he healed her pain.  When he returned to his monastery, he was told that the director was in bed with an arthritis attack, he also healed the monk.  Usui named the healing energy Reiki, which means ‘universal life force energy’ and next took the method into the slums of Kyoto.  There he lived for several years, doing healing in the town’s beggars’ quarter.  In the culture and ethic of his time, people with deformities, missing limbs or with apparent disease were supported by the community as beggars.  After healing each of these people, he asked that the person lead a new life, but he found the same faces returning.  Seeing people that he though healed still begging instead of making an honest living, he became discouraged and left the slums.  The people themselves were angry because with their diseases healed, they could no longer make their way as beggars and would now have to work.

 

Usui’s experience in the slums is used to justify some of the traditional Reiki training today: the premise being that people would not appreciate the healing because they did not pay for it.  Usui’s failures may have been due, not to the fact that the beggars did not pay, but the fact that he only healed their bodies, not their minds and spirits.  Buddhist doctrine de-emphasises healing and depend upon entering the Path to Enlightenment.  Once a person has reached Enlightenment, s/he no longer needs to reincarnate and this is the way to end suffering.  Buddhists describe the Path to Enlightenment as the only true and valid healing method.

 

Mikao Usui became a pilgrim, taking Reiki on foot through Japan, carrying a torch and lecturing.  In this way he met Chukiro Hayashi, a retired naval officer, still on reserve status.  Hayashi received his Reiki Master’s training from Usui in 1925, at the age of 47 and became Mikao Usui’s successor.  Usui died in 1930, having trained sixteen or eighteen Reiki Masters (the major sources vary), though none but Hayashi is mentioned by any Reiki source.  Chujiro Hayashi trained teams of Reiki practitioners, both men and women, including sixteen Masters in his lifetime.  He opened a healing clinic in Tokyo, where healers worked in groups on people who lived at the clinic during the time of their healing.  Reiki healers also went to the homes of people unable to come to the clinic.  It was to Chujiro Hayashi’s Shina No Machi clinic that Hawayo Takata came for healing in 1935.

 

Hawayo Kawamuru was born on December 24^th 1900, to a pineapples cutter’s family on the island of Kauai, Hawaii at Hanamaulu (Haberly, 1990, p11-44).  Too small and frail for plantation work, she took jobs while still in public school, helping to teach younger children and worked as a soda fountain clerk.  Once out of school, she was offered a servant’s job at the large and wealthy plantation owner’s house.  She lived at the plantation for the next twenty-four years, becoming housekeeper and book-keeper, a position of great responsibility.  She met and married the plantation’s accountant, Saichi Takata, in 1917 and they had a happy marriage and two daughters.

 

Saichi Takata dies of a heart attack at the age of 32 in October 1930.  Over the next five years Hawayo Takata, widowed and with two small children to raise, developed nervous exhaustion and severe physical problems.  She was diagnosed with gall bladder disease that required surgery, but had a respiratory condition with breathing difficulties that made the use of anaesthetic dangerous for her.  Her health deteriorated and she was told that without surgery she would not live, but that surgery might kill her.  After a sister dies in 1935, Takata took the news to her parents who had returned to live in Tokyo, and afterwards entered the Maeda Medical Hospital in Alaska.  For several weeks, she rested in hospital and then she was scheduled for surgery.  By this time she was also diagnosed with appendicitis and a tumour, as well as gallstones.  The night before the surgery, she heard a voice saying, ‘The operation is not necessary’.  She heard it again on the operating table, while being prepared for the anaesthetic and, getting up from it, asked the surgeon if there was another way to heal.  The doctor told her – ‘Yes’, if she could stay in Japan long enough for it, and told her about Chujiro Hayashi’s Reiki clinic.  The surgeon’s sister, who had been healed by Hayashi’s healers and had taken Reiki training, took her there that day.

 

Takata lived at the clinic and was completely healed in body, mind and spirit in four months.  She asked to be trained in Reiki, but at first she was refused, not because she was a woman, but because she was a foreigner.  Hayashi did not want the practice of Reiki healing to leave Japan at that time.  Eventually, he relented because of the intervention of the Maeda Hospital surgeon.  Hawayo Takata received her Reiki I training in spring 1936.  She joined the teams of healers that worked at the clinic and in 1937, Takata received her Reiki II and returned to Hawaii.  She had lived in Japan for two years.  Her first Reiki clinic was in Kapaa and she was successful in her work.  She obtained a massage therapist’s licence to protect her legally from the harassing authorities.  In the winter of 1938, Chujiro Hayashi visited Takata in Hawaii and they did a lecture tour together.  She received her Reiki III training from his at this time, and on February 22^nd 1938, Hayashi announced Hawayo Takata as a Master/Teacher.  He insisted that she not give the training away without charge.  He also told her that when he summoned her, she was to come to him in Japan immediately.  In 1939 she opened her second healing centre in Hilo.  In 1941 Takata awoke one morning to psychically see Hayashi standing at the foot of her bed.  She knew this was the summons and took the next available boat to Tokyo.

 

When Takata arrived at the Reiki clinic, Chujiro Hayashi, his wife Chie Hayashi and the other Japanese Reiki Masters were present.  He told her that a great war was coming and that all involved with Reiki would perish and the clinic would be closed. He had feared earlier that Reiki would be totally lost to the world and therefore had made Takata, a foreigner, his successor.  Chujiro Hayashi said further that as a naval reserve officer, he had been drafted and that as a healer and medic he would not take life.  He determined to accept his own death instead, and therefore he had summoned Takata.

 

On May 10^th 1941, in the presence of his students, Chujiro Hayashi stopped his heart by psychic means and died.  The Great War he predicted was World War II and Reiki was indeed no longer available in Japan.  Chie Hayashi survived, but their house and clinic were taken over by the occupation and she was not able to operate it as a healing centre.  Takata was the means by which Reiki continued.  She had brought it to Hawaii, then she brought it to mainland USA and, finally,  to Canada and Europe.  She lived to be eighty years of age, but she always looked decades younger.  She trained hundreds of people the Reiki healing system.  In the last ten years of her life, from 1970-1980, she initiated 22 Reiki Masters, both women and men.  Hawayo Takata died on December 11^th, 1980.  In her healing clinics, if a client was seriously ill and needed many healings, she trained someone in the family in Reiki, to do the treatments.  When the client was strong enough, they took the training as well.  Takata taught by telling stories and by example.  She did not allow her students to take notes, and did not teach in the same way with every class.  Sometimes she started the healing positions at the head, and at other times at the middle of the body or even at the feet.  The Reiki Masters/Teachers she trained were not all taught in exactly the same way.

 

Mrs Takata always charged her students, even her own family members.  She came to feel that it was indeed necessary and that people who didn’t pay for the learning didn’t value it or use it.  She felt that those who did not pay for teaching would not be a success in business or in life (Takata, 1980, p14-15).  The teachers she trained continue to charge high prices – high enough to make Reiki financially exclusive, out of reach for most people.  In my opinion, a high price to any healing system is morally wrong in today’s distressed world, though there is merit in Takata’s understanding and experience.  That was then, this is now.  Reiki is a dynamic healing system and therefore is ever-moving.  I feel that if it doesn’t move and evolve, that it will stagnate and in this process it may lose its dynamic quality.  This would be a great tragedy, as it is a powerful tool to help with healing on all levels.  Of course, there are some students that do devalue what they haven’t paid dearly for.  Modern society fosters this concept of respect based upon prices paid, rather than upon intrinsic worth.  I have found that, while a few students/clients do not understand the value of what they have received, Reiki always still benefits them in some important way.

 

Since Hawayo Takata’s death, Reiki has gone through many changes in the West.  Phyllis Furumoto, Takata’s successor and granddaughter, has been named the Grand Master of the Usui Traditional Reiki.  Teaching techniques and methods have undergone changes and several branches of Reiki have evolved.  Each of these branches claims to possess the only correct way, but the fact is that all methods work  and all of them were derived from Hawayo Takata’s teachings.

 

Usui Traditional Reiki, also called Usui Reiki Ryoho, is probably the closest to what Hawayo Takata originally brought from Japan.  It teaches Reiki in three degrees with Reiki III as the Master/Teaching’s training.  Few people are accepted for Traditional Reiki Master’s training, even those who can afford the £5,000 have to be invited.  Some teachers of Reiki now divide the third degree into two levels – Reiki III Practitioner and then Reiki III Teaching Degree.  Some call the Reiki III Practitioner’s Degree an advanced Reiki II.  One system – Radiance – divides Reiki training into two degrees, declaring the higher levels to go beyond and extend Takata’s teaching (which in fact means it is not really Reiki, but something else).  An increased number of degrees also means increased cost.

 

Reiki is gradually changing and evolving since the time of Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi and Hawayo Takata.  It is reaching more people.  Non-traditional teachers are now no longer charging high fees.  Although I myself with the Traditional Usui Reiki method, I also believe that charging high prices is no longer acceptable in this day and age and am committed to bringing Reiki to anyone who wants to learn or be treated by this powerful healing system. Having said that I believe that one of the best ways to learn Reiki is to go away for a weekend and allow yourself to soak up the experience, so I teach Reiki One, Reiki Two and most of the Reiki Three Pathway to Reiki Mastership as residential weekends so participants can concentrate on Reiki without being distracted by travelling to and fro and daily life. Everyone who has learnt Reiki in this way really enjoy it and appreciate the joyful experience.

 

The origins of Reiki need to be honoured, whilst at the same time respecting the changing world and changing needs of people and the Earth.  Reiki is love and in this time of planetary change and growth, we all need to be able to channel love to each other and to the crisis areas of the world, thus enabling the world’s population to awaken and grow.

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