Slowing down is not a question of any how; it is not a question of technique, method. We reduce everything into a how. There is a great how-to-ism all over the world, and every person, particularly the modern contemporary mind, has become a how-to-er: how to do this, how to do that, how to grow rich, how to be successful, how to influence people and win friends, how to meditate, even how to love. The day is not far off when some stupid guy is going to ask how to breathe. It is not a question of how at all. Don’t reduce life into technology. Life reduced into technology loses all flavor of joy.

I have come across a book; the name of the book is hilarious. The name is You Must Relax. Now the “must” is the problem, but it is there. It is because of the must that nobody is able to relax. Now another must on top of all other musts — You Must Relax — is going to create more tension in your life. Try to relax, and you will find out that you feel more tense than ever. Try harder and you will feel more tense and more tense.
Relaxation is not a consequence, is not a result of some activity; it is the glow of understanding.

This is the first thing I would like to relate to you: life is purposeless. It is very hard to accept it. And why is it so hard to accept that life is purposeless? It is hard because without purpose the ego cannot exist. It is hard to conceive that life has no goal because without any goal being there, there is no point in having a mind, in having an ego. The ego can exist only in a goal-oriented vision; the mind can exist only in the future. The purpose brings future in; the goal creates the space for thoughts to move, desires to arise. And then naturally there is hurry, because life is short. Today we are here and tomorrow we are gone — maybe the next moment.

Life is very short. If there is a goal to be achieved, there is bound to be hurry. And there is bound to be worry, a constant worry “whether I am going to make it or not” — a trembling heart, a shaking of the foundations. You will remain almost always in an inner earthquake, you will be always on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Have a goal, and sooner or later you will end up on the psychoanalyst’s couch.

My vision is that of a goalless life. That is the vision of all the buddhas. Everything simply is, for no reason at all. Everything simply is utterly absurd. If this is understood, then where is the hurry, and for what? Then you start living moment to moment. Then this moment is given to you, a gracious gift from God or the whole or whatsoever you want to call it — Tao, dhamma, logos. This moment is available to you: sing a song, live it in its totality. And don’t try to sacrifice it for any other moment that is going to come in the future. Live it for its own sake.

They say art is for art’s sake. It may be so, it may not be so — I am not an artist. But I can say to you: Life is for life’s sake. Each moment is utterly for its own sake. To sacrifice it for anything else is to be unintelligent. And once the habit of sacrificing settles, then this moment you will sacrifice for the next, and the next for the next, and so on, so forth — this year for the next year, and this life for the next life! Then it is a simple logical process: once you have taken the first step, then the whole journey starts — the journey that leads you into the wasteland, the journey that makes your life a desert, the journey that is self-destructive, suicidal.

Live in the moment for the sheer joy of living it. Then each moment has the quality of an orgasm. Yes, it is orgasmic. This is how my sannyasins have to live, with no should, with no ought, with no must, with no commandment. You are not here to be with me to become martyrs, you are here to be with me to enjoy life to its fullness. And the only way to live, love, enjoy, is to forget the future. It exists not.

And if you can forget the future, if you can see that it is not there, there is no point in constantly getting ready for it. The moment future is dropped, past becomes irrelevant on its own accord. We carry the past so that we can use it in the future. Otherwise who will carry the past? It is unnecessary. If there is no future, what is the point of carrying the knowledge that the past has given to you? It is a burden which will destroy the joy of the journey.

And let me remind you, it is a pure journey. Life is a pilgrimage to nowhere, from nowhere to nowhere. And between these two nowheres is the now-here. Nowhere consists of two words: now, here. Between these two nowheres is the now-here. It is not a question of following a certain technique to slow down, because if your basic approach towards life remains the same — goal-oriented — you may try to slow down, and you may even succeed in slowing down, but now you have started another tension in your life. You have to be constantly on guard so that you remain slow; you have to hold yourself continuously so that you remain slow.

You cannot have a free flow of your energies. You will be constantly afraid, because if you forget the technique, immediately the old habit will take possession of you. And the habit is there, because in fact the habit is rooted in the philosophy of your life. You have been taught to become achievers: Achieve something!

From the very first moment a child is born, we start feeding him poisons: ambition, achievement, success, richness, name, fame. We start poisoning his sources of being; we give great attention… twenty-five years are wasted in giving a poisonous education to children. It is one-third of life; it seems to be a wastage. And it is the most important one-third, because by the time a person is twenty-five he has already started declining in many ways. The highest peak of his sexuality is no longer there, it was nearabout when he was seventeen and a half; nearabout eighteen he had the highest sexual peak. By the time he is twenty-five he is already getting old.

Twenty-five years wasted in creating an achiever’s mind…. And then there is competition, conflict. On each level of life, everywhere there is politics. Even in private intimate relationship there is politics: the husband trying to control the wife, the wife trying to control the husband, the children trying to control the parents, the parents trying to control the children. There is no intimacy left, because for the achieving mind intimacy is not possible. He only knows how to use the other; he cannot be respectful to the other. He is exploitative. His relationship with life is what Martin Buber calls the “I-it” relationship: everything is reduced into a commodity.

You love a woman: immediately you start reducing her into a commodity, reducing her into being a wife, and she is trying to reduce you from a man into a husband. To be a man is something beautiful, to be a woman is something divine, but to be a wife or to be a husband is simply ugly. Love is no more there, it is law. Intimacy is gone; now it is bargain, business. Now the poetry is dead. And both are in politics now: who dominates whom?

From the most intimate relationship to the most impersonal relationship, it is the same story. The story is that of I-it. That’s why we have created an ugly world. And naturally, when there is so much competition and so many competitors, Somen, how can you slow down? If you slow down you will be a failure, if you slow down you will never be able to succeed, if you slow down you are lost! If you slow down you will be anonymous, you will not be able to leave your signature in the world. Who will you be if you slow down? Everybody else is not slowing down.

It is almost as if you are in an Olympic race and you ask me, “How to slow down?” If you slow down, you are a drop-out! Then you are no more in the Olympic race. And this whole life has been turned into an Olympic race. Everybody is racing, and everybody has to race to the optimum, because it is a question of life and death. Millions of enemies… we are living in a world where everybody is your enemy, because with whomsoever you are in competition, they are your enemies. They are destroying your possibilities of success, you are destroying their possibilities of success.

In this ambitious world, friendship cannot bloom, love is almost impossible, compassion cannot exist. We have created such an ugly mess, and the root is that we think that there is something to achieve.

There is no difference between a capitalist country or a communist country, it is the same philosophy. Communism is a by-product of capitalism, just as Christianity is a by-product of Judaism. There is not much difference; only words change. The game remains the same — translated into another language, certainly, but the game is the same.
Power politics is as great in a communist country — in fact there is more than there is in a capitalist country — because we never change the foundation, we only go on whitewashing the walls. You can whitewash them, you can change the color; that is not going to make any real difference. And that’s what we go on doing in our individual lives too.

One politician came to me and he wanted to learn how to meditate. I asked why. He said “Why? Meditation gives peace, silence, and I want to be silent, I want to be peaceful.”
I asked him, “Do you really want to be silent and peaceful?”
He said, “Yes, that’s why I have come from so long a distance.”
“Then,” I said, “the first thing you will have to understand is that the political mind can never be silent and can never be peaceful. You will have to choose. If you want really to enter into the world of meditation, you will have to get out of the world of politics. You cannot ride on two horses, and two horses which are going in diametrically opposite directions.”

He said, “That is too much! In fact I had come to you because of my political work. There is so much tension in the mind, I cannot sleep in the night, I cannot rest, I toss and turn, and the whole day and the night too, the same political anxiety continues. I had come to you so that you can teach me a technique of meditation that can help me to relax and compete more efficiently in the world. I am not ready to pay that much for meditation. I want meditation to serve me in my political competition. Twenty years I have been in politics, and yet I have not become the chief minister of my state.”

Now, this man cannot meditate. Meditation is not something that can grow in any soil. It needs a basic understanding; the change has to be very fundamental. It needs a new soil to grow in; it needs a new gestalt. A meditator naturally slows down with no effort. He does not practice it. A practiced thing is never true; it is artificial, arbitrary. Avoid practiced things — at the most they can be actings, they are not true. And only truth liberates.

A meditator is naturally slow — not because he is trying to be slow but just because there is nowhere to go. There is nothing to achieve, there is nothing to become, the becoming has ceased. When becoming ceases, being is. And being is slow, non-aggressive, unhurried. Then you can savor the taste of each moment with total presence, you can be present to the present; otherwise you are in such a hurry that it is impossible to have any look at that which is. Your eyes are focused on a faraway distant goal, a faraway distant star; you are looking there.

I have heard an ancient story, it happened in Greece. A great astrologer, the most famous of those days, fell into a well. Because in the night he was studying the stars, walking on the road he forgot that there was a well by the side and fell into it. The sound of his falling and his crying…. An old woman who lived in a hut by the side came out, helped him to get out of the well. He was very happy. He said, “You have saved my life! Do you know who I am? I am the royal astrologer. My fee is very great — even kings have to wait for months to consult me — but for you I will predict your future. You come tomorrow morning to my house, and I will not take any fee.”
The old woman laughed and she said, “Forget all about it! You cannot see even two feet ahead — how can you see my future?”

This is the situation of millions of people on this earth. They cannot see that which is, they are obsessed with that which should be. The greatest obsession that humanity suffers is of “that which should be.” It is a kind of madness. The really healthy person has no concern with that which should be. His whole concern is the immediate, that which is. And you will be surprised: if you enter into the immediate, you will find the ultimate in it. If you move into that which is close by, you will find all the distant stars in it. If you move in the present moment, the whole eternity is in your hands. If you know your being, there is no question of becoming. All that you could have ever imagined to become you already are.

You are gods who have forgotten who they are. You are emperors who have fallen asleep and are dreaming that they have become beggars. Now beggars are trying to become emperors — in dreams they are making great efforts to become emperors, and all that is needed is to wake up! And when I say wake up, where can you wake up? In the future? In the past? The past is no more, the future not yet — where you can wake up? You can wake up only now, and you can wake up only here. This is the only moment there is, and this is the only reality there is, and this is the only reality that has always been and will always be.

Change your basic philosophy of that of an achiever. Relax into your being. Don’t have any ideals, don’t try to make something out of yourself, don’t try to improve upon God. You are perfect as you are. With all your imperfections you are perfect. If you are imperfect, you are perfectly imperfect — but perfection is there. Once this is understood, where is the hurry? Where is the worry? You have already slowed down. And then it is a morning walk with no destination, going nowhere. You can enjoy each tree and each sunray and each bird and each person that passes by.

SPIRIT is no entity in the sense of having form; for, as Buddhist philosophy has it, where there is a form, there is a cause for suffering. Only the liberated Spirit is able to faintly realise the nature of the source whence it sprung and whither it must eventually return.

When “the one becomes two,” it may then be referred to as Spirit and matter. To “Spirit” is referable every manifestation of consciousness, reflective or direct, and of unconscious purposiveness (to adopt a modern expression used in Western philosophy, so-called) as evidenced in the Vital Principle, and Nature’s submission to the majestic sequence of immutable law. There can be no manifestation of Consciousness, semi-consciousness, or even “unconscious purposiveness,” except through the vehicle of matter; that is to say, on this our plane, wherein human consciousness in its normal state cannot soar beyond what is known as transcendental metaphysics, it is only through some molecular aggregation or fabric that Spirit wells up in a stream of individual or sub-conscious objectivity.Spirit alone has no form, and therefore cannot be said to exist. Whenever man (the ethereal, inner man) reaches that point when he becomes utterly spiritual, hence, formless, he has reached a state of perfect bliss. MAN as an objective being becomes annihilated, but the spiritual entity with its subjective life, will live forever, for spirit is incorruptible and immortal. “There is but one unknown — the ultimate substratum of Spirit (Space). That which is not the Absolute and the One is, in virtue of that very differentiation, however far removed from the physical senses, always accessible to the spiritual human mind, which is a corruscation of the undifferentiable Integral.” The Hermetists and the later Rosicrucians held that all things visible and invisible were produced by the contention of light with darkness, and that every particle of matter contains within itself a spark of the divine essence — or light, spirit — which, through its tendency to free itself from its entanglement and return to the central source, produced motion in the particles, and from motion forms were born.

Absolute, Divine Spirit is one with absolute Divine Substance: Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti are one in essence. Though our teachings insist upon the identity of spirit and matter, and though we say that spirit is potential matter, and matter simply crystallized spirit (e.g., as ice is solidified steam); yet since the original and eternal condition of the all is not spirit but meta-spirit, so to speak, (visible and solid matter being simply its periodical manifestations), we maintain that the term spirit can only be applied to the true individuality. Primordial matter is co-eternal with Spirit, and is not our visible, tangible, and divisible matter, but its extreme sublimation. Pure Spirit is but one remove from the no-Spirit, or the absolute all. Unless you admit that man was evolved out of this primordial Spirit-Matter, and represents a regular progressive scale of “principles” from meta-Spirit down to the grossest matter, how can we ever come to regard the inner man as immortal, and at the same time as a spiritual Entity and a mortal man?

It is a fundamental principle of the Occult philosophy, this same homogeneity of matter and the immutability of natural laws, which are so much insisted upon by materialism; but that unity rests upon the inseparability of Spirit from matter, and, if the two are once divorced, the whole Kosmos would fall back into chaos and non-being. Spirit is matter on the seventh plane; matter is Spirit — on the lowest point of its cyclic activity; and both — are Maya. Esoteric philosophy rejects every claim to the “miraculous,” and accepts nothing outside the uniform and immutable laws of Nature. But it teaches a cyclic law, a double stream of force (or spirit) and of matter, which, starting from the neutral centre of Being, develops in its cyclic progress and incessant transformations.

Divine Thought cannot be defined, or its meaning explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance in which the former is sensed spiritually by those who can do so. The occultists are often misunderstood because, for lack of better terms, they apply to the essence of Force under certain aspects the descriptive epithet of substance. Now the names for the varieties of “substance” on different planes of perception and being are legion. Eastern Occultism has a special appellation for each kind; but Science — like England, in the recollection of a witty Frenchman, blessed with thirty-six religions and only one fish-sauce — has but one name for all, namely, “Substance.” What, then, is the “primordial Substance,” that mysterious object of which Alchemy was ever talking, and which became the subject of philosophical speculation in every age? What can it be finally, even in its phenomenal pre-differentiation? Even that is ALL manifested Nature and — nothing to our senses. It is mentioned under various names in every Cosmogony, referred to in every philosophy, and shown to be, to this day, the ever grasp-eluding PROTEUS in Nature. We touch and do not feel it; we look at it without seeing it; we breathe it and do not perceive it; we hear and smell it without the smallest cognition that it is there; for it is in every molecule of that which in our illusion and ignorance we regard as Matter in any of its states, or conceive as a feeling, a thought, an emotion. … In short, it is the “upadhi,” or vehicle, of every possible phenomenon, whether physical, mental, or psychic.

Matter is Eternal. It is the Upadhi (the physical basis) for the One infinite Universal Mind to build thereon its ideations. “The Deity is boundless and infinite expansion,” says an Occult axiom. “Therefore, it was taught in the inner temples that this visible universe of spirit and matter is but the concrete image of the ideal abstraction; it was built on the model of the first DIVINE IDEA. Thus our universe existed from ETERNITY in a latent state. The soul animating this purely spiritual universe is the central sun, the highest deity itself.”

There is a deep philosophy underlying the earliest worship in the world, that of the Sun and of Fire. Of all the Elements known to physical science, Fire is the one that has ever eluded analysis. What says the esoteric teaching with regard to fire? “Fire,” it says, “is the most perfect and unadulterated reflection, in Heaven as on Earth, of the ONE FLAME. It is Life and Death, the origin and the end of every material thing. It is divine ‘SUBSTANCE’.” If the Deity, the radical One, is eternal and an infinite substance (“the Lord thy God is a consuming fire”) and never consumed, then it does not seem reasonable that the Occult teaching should be held as unphilosophical when it says: “Thus were the Arupa and Rupa worlds formed: from ONE light seven lights; from each of the seven, seven times seven,” etc., etc.

In the shoreless ocean of space radiates the central, spiritual, and Invisible sun. The universe is his body, spirit and soul; and after this ideal model are framed ALL THINGS. These three emanations are the three lives, the three degrees of the gnostic Pleroma, the three “Kabalistic Faces,” for the ANCIENT of the ancient, the holy of the aged, the great En-Soph, “has a form and then he has no form.” The invisible “assumed a form when he called the universe into existence,” says the Sohar, the Book of Splendor. The first light is His soul, the Infinite, Boundless, and Immortal breath; under the efflux of which the universe heaves its mighty bosom, infusing Intelligent life throughout creation. The second emanation condenses cometary matter and produces forms within the cosmic circle; sets the countless worlds floating in the electric space, and infuses the unintelligent, blind life-principle into every form. The third, produces the whole universe of physical matter; and as it keeps gradually receding from the Central Divine Light its brightness wanes and it becomes DARKNESS and the BAD — pure matter, the “gross purgations of the celestial fire” of the Hermetists.

Belief in “Creators,” or the personified Powers of Nature, is in truth no polytheism, but a philosophical necessity. Like all the other planets of our system, the Earth has seven Logoi — the emanating rays of the one “Father-Ray” — the PROTAGONOS, or the manifested “Logos” — he who sacrifices his esse (or flesh, the Universe) that the world may live and every creature therein have conscious being. It is a well-known fact — to learned Symbologists at all events — that in every great religion of antiquity, it is the Logos Demiurge (the second Logos), or the first emanation from the mind (Mahat), who is made to strike, so to say, the keynote of that which may be called the correlation of individuality and personality in the subsequent scheme of evolution. The Logos it is, who is shown in the mystic symbolism of cosmogony, theogony, and anthropogony, playing two parts in the drama of Creation and Being, i.e., that of the purely human personality and the divine impersonality of the so-called Avatars, or divine incarnations, and of the universal Spirit, called Christos by the Gnostics.

To become a Self-Conscious Spirit, the latter must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit per se is an unconscious negative ABSTRACTION. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit; hence to become the highest Dhyan Chohan it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self-consciousness as a human, i.e., conscious Being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The evolution of Spirit into matter could never have been achieved; nor would it have received its first impulse, had not the bright Spirits sacrificed their own respective super-ethereal essences to animate the man of clay, by endowing each of his inner principles with a portion, or rather, a reflection of that essence. The Dhyanis of the Seven Heavens (the seven planes of Being) are the NOUMENOI of the actual and future Elements, just as the Angels of the Seven Powers of Nature — the grosser effects of which are perceived by us in what Science is pleased to call the “modes of motion” — the imponderable forces and what not — are the still higher noumenoi of still higher Hierarchies.

“The one Cosmic atom becomes seven atoms on the plane of matter, and each is transformed into a centre of energy; that same atom becomes seven rays on the plane of spirit, and the seven creative forces of nature, radiating from the root-essence … follow, one the right, the other the left path, separate till the end of the Kalpa, and yet are in close embrace. What unites them? KARMA.” “As it is above so it is below” is the fundamental axiom of occult philosophy. As the logos is seven-fold, e.g., throughout Kosmos it appears as seven logoi under seven different forms, or, as taught by learned Brahmins, “each of these is the central figure of one of the seven main branches of the ancient wisdom religion”; and, as the seven principles which correspond to the seven distinct states of Pragna, or consciousness, are allied to seven states of matter and the seven forms of force, the divisions must be the same in all that concerns the earth.

Our Earth contains potentially as much of Spirit as it does of Matter. The Globe, propelled onward by the Spirit of the Earth and his six assistants, gets all its vital forces, life, and powers through the medium of the seven planetary Dhyanis from the Spirit of the Sun. They are his messengers of Light and Life. The Earth gives Man his body, the gods (Dhyanis) his five inner principles, the psychic Shadow, of which those gods are often the animating principle. SPIRIT (Atman) is one — and indiscrete.

Philosophy could never have formed its conception of a logical, universal, and Absolute Deity if it had no Mathematical Point within the Circle to base its speculations upon. It is only the manifested Point, lost to our senses after its pregenetic appearance in the infinitude and incognizability of the Circle, that made a reconciliation between philosophy and theology possible — on condition that the latter should abandon its crude materialistic dogmas. And it is because it has so unwisely rejected the Pythagorean Monad and geometrical figures, that Christian theology has evolved its self-created human and personal God, the monstrous Head from whence flow in two streams the dogmas of Salvation and Damnation. This is so true that even those clergymen who would be philosophers and who were Masons, have, in their arbitrary interpretations, fathered upon the ancient sages the queer idea that “the Monad represented (with them) the throne of the Omnipotent Deity, placed in the centre of the Empyrean to indicate T.G.A.O.T.U.” — “the Great Architect of the Universe.” A curious explanation this, more Masonic than strictly Pythagorean.

Without throwing any discredit upon time-honoured beliefs, in whatever direction, we are forced to draw a marked line between blind faith, evolved by theologies, and knowledge due to the independent researches of long generations of adepts; between, in short, faith and philosophy. There have been — in all ages — undeniably learned and good men who, having been reared in sectarian beliefs, died in their crystallized convictions. For Protestants, the garden of Eden is the primeval point of departure in the drama of Humanity, and the solemn tragedy on the summit of Calvary, the prelude to the hoped-for Millennium. For Roman Catholics, Satan is at the foundation of Kosmos, Christ in its centre, and Antichrist at its apex. For both, the Hierarchy of Being begins and ends within the narrow frames of their respective theologies; one self-created personal God and an Empyrean ringing with the Hallelujahs of created angels; the rest, false gods, Satan and fiends.

In Theosophical teachings the term “Spirit” is applied solely to that which belongs directly to Universal Consciousness, and which is its homogeneous and unadulterated emanation. The Monad is impersonal and a god per se, albeit unconscious on this plane. For, divorced from its third (often fifth) principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line of the first manifested triangle or trinity, it can have no consciousness or perception of things on this earthly plane. “The highest sees through the eyes of the lowest” in the manifested world; Purusha (Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakriti (matter) in the material spheres; and so does Atma-Buddhi without Manas. But each individual spirit — this individuality lasting only throughout the manvantaric life-cycle — may be described as a centre of consciousness, a self-sentient and self-conscious centre; a state, not a conditioned individual.

The Hands of Light filled with energy

Reiki has a very unique history. Although the Reiki energy itself goes back over 2500 years, as evidenced in Sanskrit Sutras, and the writings of Tibetan Monks and Enlightened Masters, the history of Reiki at taught today is much more modern. It begins in the early 1900s. Evidence of Reiki from before World War II remained in Japan and has been rediscovered to the rest of the world very recently.

With roots in Japan prior to World War II, it is not surprising that some documentation was lost. Apparently the survivors of Dr. Hayashi lost to the war the resources allowing them to continue the clinic he founded, and many stopped practicing Reiki for fear of persecution for not ‘supporting the war’. Others continued to practice and their students are still practicing today.

If it were not for Mrs. Takata learning Reiki and taking it to America, this healing technique would have been lost to the western world. The war brought with it the loss of valuable memories and knowledge that was present in the group who learned from Reiki’s originator, Dr. Usui. Mrs. Takata had to modify the story of Reiki right after World War II to make it acceptable to the Christian, western mind. Hopefully, with an open mind, and with practice, study and intuition, we will bring back any lost knowledge.
The history presented here is primarily the story of Reiki according to Mrs. Takata, with some notations about information from one of Dr. Usui’s teaching manual included.

Reiki is a Japanese word meaning “Universal Life-Force-Energy”. The “Ki” part is the same word as Chi or Qi, the Chinese word for the energy which underlies everything. Reiki is a system for channeling that energy to someone for the purpose of healing. It was discovered by Dr. Usui in the late 1800′s. He was born about 1865, and there are two accounts of his discovery of Reiki; one being that he was a Buddhist Monk and after a 28-year quest, he journeyed to Mount Kurama. The other account is that he was a teacher or perhaps dean of a Christian school in Kyoto, Japan.

Traditional Japanese Reiki

The memorial dedicated to Usui Sensei, the founder of the Reiki healing system is located at the Saihoji Temple in the Suginami district of Tokyo. The memorial was created and is maintained by the Usui Shiki Reiki Ryoho shortly after Usui Sensei’s transition. This is the organization that Usui Sensei started to promote the practice and teaching of Reiki. Officials of the Saihoji Temple verified where the memorial is located. Many are surprised that the Usui Shiki Reiki Ryoho still exists because part of the “traditional” story stated that all the members of this group died in the war or had stopped using Reiki and that Mrs. Takata was the only remaining teacher of the Usui system in the world. We now know the Usui Shiki Reiki Ryoho has always existed and still exists today. They have been teaching and practicing Reiki in Japan all this time.

The Lineage of Usui Sensei in Japan

The first president of the Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, the organization that Usui Sensei started, was Usui Sensei himself. The second, his successor, was Mr. Ushida. The third was a Mr. Taketomi. The fourth was a Mr. Watanabe. The fifth was a Mr. Wanami, followed by the sixth, a Mrs. Koyama who retired in the beginning of this 1999. The seventh and current president, the real successor of Usui Sensei is a Mr. Kondo.

Relax the mind
“Then take another step, a little deeper; tell the mind to relax. And if the body listens, mind also listens, but you can not start with the mind – you have to start from the beginning. You can not start from the middle. Many people start with the mind and they fail; they fail because they start from a wrong place. Everything should be done in the right order.
“If you become capable of relaxing the body voluntarily, then you will be able to help your mind relax voluntarily. Mind is a more complex phenomenon. Once you have become confident that the body listens to you, you will have a new trust in yourself. Now even the mind can listen to you. It will take a little longer with the mind, but it happens.”

Relax the heart
When the mind is relaxed, then start relaxing your heart, the world of your feelings, emotions – which is even more complex more subtle. But now you will be moving with trust with great trust in yourself. Now you will know it is possible with the body and possible with the mind, it is possible with the heart too.”

Relax the Being
Then only, when you have gone through these three steps, can you take the forth. Now you can go to the innermost core of your being, which is beyond body, mind and heart: the very center of you existence.
“You will be able to relax it too, and that relaxation certainly brings the greatest joy possible, the ultimate in ecstasy and acceptance. You will be full of bliss and rejoicing.