HUNA - THE WORKABLE PSYCHO-RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE POLYNESIANS - part V

PART V.

HUNA AND THE SEVERAL RELIGIONS

THE ANCIENT system of Huna seems to have been known in full form in Egypt at the time of the building of the Great Pyramid. This would give us an approximate date of 2600 B. C. (There may have been "Atlantean" origin of Huna as far back as 50,000 B. C. This is all purely speculative.)

After the building of the Great Pyramid, named "The Light," according to the legendary oral history of the Berber kahunas, the Secret Lore, or "Light" as it was also called, disappeared with the tribes who knew it and who migrated largely to the Pacific, or, in the case of one tribe, to the Atlas Mountain region of North Africa.

In Egypt the Huna lore was kept secret and the language (later the Polynesian) was never reduced to any form of writing. This language bears every evidence of having been the one used when terms for the several elements in Huna were invented. Small common root words were united to make longer words, each root describing some feature of the thing named. (Or some long and complicated meanings were represented by short symbol words used as a part of longer terms.) It is, therefore, evident that peoples speaking what is now a Polynesian language, were the original holders of the knowledge of Huna.

Otherwise the words would be artificial, or substitutes, and their root structure not uniformly a source of the full word's meaning. The tribes who lived in or around Egypt, migrated, touching India and other lands and leaving behind them parts of the original Huna which can still be identified in various religions.

In India there is a great similarity between the idea of Pranic energy and the three voltages of vital force used by the three human selves. Perhaps the division of the pranas into forty odd kinds (for taste, sight, hearing, etc.) came later when the practical use of Huna was forgotten (if ever fully known). The same may be said about the ideas relating to the three shadowy bodies inhabited by the three selves of man. In modern Theosophy, which is drawn from the several religious systems of India, we find the three shadowy bodies expanded to seven, of which some are supposed to house elements related to emotions, or mind, or to be of an "astral shell" type. The idea of thought forms was well preserved, and, while not known in such detail as in Huna, was recognizable in terms of the Old Secret. The Bhagavad Gita treats of our Aumakua, and of the two lower selves considered as a single self. The triune idea was perhaps known after a fashion, but was applied more to the gods.

The doctrines of reincarnation and karma, while enlarged, as were the ideas of prana and the shadowy-bodies, retained some of the original significance. In Huna the matter of evolution through a series of incarnations was part of the general system, but the theory was made to fit the changes brought about in the course of Graduation from one level of consciousness to the next. It is apparent that it is not the same man who incarnates after a Graduation in which the Uhane and Aumakua have stepped up, leaving the Unihipili to take over as the Uhane in the next incarnation, and a new Unihipili to join the man from the animal level. The involutionary idea of a man being forced back to become an animal. In some incarnation cause of "sin" has no part in Huna so far as has been ascertained.

The doctrine of karma applies, in Huna, only to the law of cause and effect as it operates under the free will in single incarnations. Alter death the man makes a thought form world or "purgatory" in which he lives as in a dream, and there such things as he may have on his conscience haunt him until he has made what amounts to a retribution. As memories are not carried from incarnation to incarnation, and. as no mechanism has been discovered for carrying the results of past sins or good deeds across, it would seem that what karma there may be, must be in the hands of the Aumakua. Perhaps the Aumakua sees that we are punished for hurts done others in past incarnation, but in any event, the idea of karma would have to be made to apply individually to the three selves of man, as in the idea of reincarnation. It is evident that the law of justice in the animal world (to which the physical body and Unihipili seem to belong) is quite different from the law of justice conforming to the inductive reasoning powers of the Uhane. The justice of the level of the Aumakua is probably still different. Be that as it may, Huna recognizes no karmic law which says that a man must be forced to suffer from illness, accident or social tangles to expiate past-life karma.

In Theosophy much stress has been placed on the Masters. Under Huna a master would be one who was able to contact the Aumakua and get help of a "miraculous" nature. It is unfortunate that so little can be learned about these highly evolved legendary men or their activities. It is, however, very possible that men can evolve, come to know the Aumakua, and Graduate to the levels above in orderly fashion, and still have no definite and detailed knowledge of Huna. In all races we have had our saints who have reached their elevated state through a deeper inner realization of the great verities, rather than through what might be called a scientific understanding of themselves and their elements.

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IN CHRISTIANITY there is to be found much of the Huna lore, some things badly overlaid with dogma, or distorted, others in a surprisingly good state of preservation.

With the beginnings of the early Churches, many rites and practices were adopted which, while not well described in the New Testament as it has come down to us, belonged to Huna.

With the passage of time the rituals of the Church (Roman, Greek and derivative Churches), came to be used with little understanding of their original purpose. The injunction of Our Lord to go forth to all the world, healing and helping, could not be fully obeyed. The healing mechanisms were gradually lost until only their outward forms remained.

After the Dark Ages there were many who sensed this lack in the Church, and who tried to get back to the early and more practical doctrines by fresh studies of the Bible. The protests against priests and rituals rose in volume, and Protestant Churches were formed. In these the priests were discarded and the members tried to find God for themselves, through Jesus as the Son of God. The trend was back to the austerities. But still there was little healing of a predictable kind.

In modern times the science of psychology began to take wavering form soon after the discovery of mesmerism. Quimby, a New Englander, and after him, Mrs. Eddy, recognized and tried to use for healing the "Wisdom" and the "Power," which was a recognition of the Aumakua and its high mana force. Elements from Indian sources may have given the idea of "holding the thoughts," and a denial of unwanted conditions was used with even better results than might have been expected. In New Thought much the same methods were used, but with less drawing on Christianity in constructing new doctrines and dogmas. The Unity movement in Christian circles followed the trend with new applications of doctrines and dogmas in many lesser Mental Science groups where a religious approach was kept, similar steps toward better understanding were taken. But as these were all steps largely made possible by the advance of knowledge in the science of Psychology, and as this science became stalemated some decades back and could offer no more guidance, the modern religions also bogged down, and then began slowly to freeze their dogmas and reject outside ideas.

For Christians, the understanding of Huna is not difficult. The teachings of Jesus have much in common with the older lore. Jesus demonstrated ability to contact the Father at will and, in explaining the miracles, pointed out the fact that it was through the Father that those things were possible. The kahunas believed that instant healing was possible only through the Aumakua, which was to them the Aumakua or "Older, most trustworthy parental" Self. As the Christ, Jesus is often considered universal in nature. The kahunas believed that all High Selves were so closely related that they could as one unit aggregate of consciousness, and thus take on the universal aspect, even while remaining individuals.

Jesus was closely identified with the Father, being a very part of Him, or Son. The Father worked through him and seemed to be in him. This feeling that the Aumakua is inside one, is explained in Huna as a sensation experienced when contact with the Aumakua is made, through the mechanism of the connecting thread or cord of aka material. Thought forms of future events are brought to us from the Aumakua along this cord and are presented to the focus of consciousness, of the Uhane , "inside" us. We do not get the impression that our premonitions or premonitory dreams come from without, but from within our own physical bodies in some mysterious way. (It may be, however, that, at rare intervals, the Aumakua actually may enter the physical body in its aka body.)

Jesus told of the love and the joy of the Lord. Worshipers of many faiths have felt the sudden emotional surge of love, joy and devotion that comes to bless the devotee. The kahunas knew it. It is the reaction of the Unihipili when able to contact the Aumakua. We, who are the Uhanes, have no ability to cause emotion. That is part of the mentation peculiar to the Unihipili. But we can and do share the emotions generated or felt by the Unihipili. The joyous emotional upsurge, like the feeling of an electric tingle, are common indications that we are in contact with the Aumakua. This is our most tangible sensory proof of the verity of the Aumakua (or the "Comforter" of Christianity. The Aumakua is also the counterpart of the Holy Spirit in Christianity.)

In India a religious state known as samadi is attained. It is this same emotional joy and love and devotion. But contact of this nature is not made through religion alone. The telepathic experimenters and others, working with psychic abilities, often report such contact. It is unpredictable in its coming, but unmistakable once it comes.

In Upton Sinclair's book, Mental Radio, his wife has been quoted as she writes of her methods of using telepathy. She speaks of the conscious mind and the subconscious but knows another consciousness which she calls "The Deep Mind." She tells how she finds the telepathic impressions from the subconscious (our Unihipili) dim, fragmentary fleeting and not always accurate. But sometimes the "deep mind" seemed also to answer her questions, and its answers are unmistakable, clear and convincing. With these answers there comes a great feeling of "gladness," and in describing this type of experience on page 201, she undoubtedly shows that she has frequently touched the Aumakua.

In healing work, Jesus at times used a physical stimulus to accompany words and commands that unquestionably may have had strong powers of suggestion. Recall the blind eyes covered with a mud made of earth and spittle. This is similar to the kahuna use of a physical stimulus to accompany and strengthen suggestion.

Jesus sometimes forgave the sins of those about to be healed, but not always (see the case of the blind man). The kahunas ordered their patients to make amends for hurts done others, then used some physical stimuli to aid suggestion in draining off guilt fixations. (So that the Unihipili of the patient would be restored to a condition in which it could be healed by the Aumakua. This condition was one in which the "path" of contact with the Aumakua was said to be "unblocked." It was the condition of feeling oneself cleansed of guilt. It was a condition necessary to the restoration of faith, without which no healing was thought possible.)

The concept of "salvation" is not a definite mechanism in Huna. It was believed that men could, however, be greatly helped and saved much stumbling about, if they could be told that there was an Aumakua and that it could be touched and asked for aid and for a certain degree of guidance-under-free-will. This belief was expanded in India to become the salvation to. be obtained by breaking the chain of reincarnations. The grip of karma was to be broken through having all sins worn out by suffering.

In Christianity we find only indefinite traces of the doctrine of reincarnation. Karma is found only in the day to day application of the law of atonement for sins. The Jews hoped for a Savior to redeem the race from bondage. The redemption in Christianity was from accumulated sin, a slightly similar idea to that of karma.

Jesus, as the Christ, can well be understood in terms of Huna. In Huna we cannot pray directly to the Beings higher than the Aumakua. We must ask the Aumakua to exert its superior mind power in our behalf and, so to speak, send on any prayer or praise of ours which should go to God or Higher Beings. Christians are, likewise, directed to address all prayers to God through Christ. Jesus said that he would pray to the Father for the disciples, and in this aspect he stood as the Christ or Aumakua, if we are to judge by the light of the Secret lore.

The externals of the reconstructed Huna system are cold, but within lies all the possibilities of those deepest, warmest responses to the Aumakua. In the old religions, even when stripped of healing, there has remained something so mystical and deep that even when dimly sensed we are swept by waves of nostalgic longing to get back to some greater verity of being.

The new church, the "Huna Fellowship," has been envisioned as one in which the lost things will again be known and used. In it we will perhaps get quickly back to those nearly lost verities of experience, restore our touch with the Aumakua, and through it with Ultimate God. To those of us for whom religion has been a deeply integrated part of our lives, the prospect of such a restoration has about it a breathless quality of expectation, a quality of upward surging. It will not need to be described for those who feel it for themselves.

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from HUNA - THE WORKABLE PSYCHO-RELIGIOUS SYSTEM OF THE POLYNESIANS
by Max Freedom Long

published in 1945 and out of print since 1949

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