In ancient times certain sages in the cultures of Tibet, South America (The Incas), Egypt, India, and China were believed to possess a deep understanding of the world at the levels of spirit, energy and matter. They used this knowledge to heal humans at the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical levels. This knowledge, which today we call Reiki, was possessed by only a very few and was jealously guarded, being passed down from sage to student through a series of secret initiations. This secret knowledge is incorporated in the sutras of many religions: around 2500 BC Buddhist monks created a set of sutras in Sanskrit recording this knowledge. Over the centuries, the focus of the monks' work shifted from the physical plane to the spiritual and the knowledge of how to heal was lost and remained buried until the beginning of this century.
The sacred texts of most religions contain many instances of instant healing. One such is the story of the leper healed by Christ: "And behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilst, though canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed." This is an instance of hands-on healing. At another time a Roman centurion came up to Jesus and said, "Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, dreadfully tormented." And Jesus said to him, "I will come and heal him." The centurion answered and said, "Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldst enter under my roof. Say but the word and my servant shall be healed". Then Jesus said to the centurion "Go thy way, and as thou hast believed, so let it be done for you." And the centurion's servant was healed that same hour. This is an example of absentee healing.
On 15th August 1865, Mikao Usui was born in the Gifu district of Japan. He was a talented and hard-working student and spent many years studying and searching for the knowledge to heal. After surviving a near fatal illness he developed a deep interest in the healing arts and spent many years researching the subject. He travelled to China, Tibet and perhaps India in pursuit of the knowledge he so ardently wished to possess. It is believed that he was able, finally, to discover the formula for healing in the Sanskrit sutras, specifically in the Lotus and Healing Buddha sutras. However, he was unable to translate this knowledge into actual personal practice.
Around 1900 Usui decided to undertake a 21-day meditation and fast on the holy mountain Kurama, which lies to the north of the city of Kyoto. Just before the dawn of the twenty-first day he received enlightenment. It is said that in the pre-dawn darkness of the last day of his sojourn on Mount Kurama, he was hit on the forehead by a bolt of blinding white light. He was knocked unconscious and in this state he had visions in which he saw iridescent bubbles enclosed within which were certain signs and symbols. On recovering consciousness, he had the conviction that he had been given the final key to the kind of healing described in the sutras of major religions, which he had sought for many years.
Details of Usui's life are rather sparse and often conflicting. The most reliable information seems to be what is written on the 10 foot x 4-foot memorial stone erected over his grave at the Saihoji temple in Tokyo. Among other things it recounts how he helped many people who were injured in the devastating earthquake which struck Tokyo in September 1923. He died on the 9th of March 1926 following a stroke. He was 62. Usui had a wife named Sadoko and they had a son and a daughter. The Japanese inscription on the monument further records that Usui was a warm, simple and humble person who was physically healthy and well proportioned. He had a smiling face and was courageous in the face of adversity. His knowledge of medicine, psychology, fortune telling and the theology of world religions were vast. He is believed to have spent 7 years in the poorest quarter of Kyoto. In 1922 he opened a school in Tokyo where he trained many students, sixteen to teacher level. Over 2,000 people learned Reiki from Usui and he was addressed as "sensei", which means teacher or master.
Usui used symbols, a set of affirmations, and employed seven main hand positions in Reiki healing. These positions are part of a standard healing pattern in use long before Usui's time.
Among his student were three naval officers. One of them was Chujiro Hayashi who was born in 1878 and who learned Reiki in 1925. Hayashi opened a healing clinic in Tokyo and developed a complex set of hand positions for use in healing. His method required several practitioners to work on a client at the same time. He also introduced a system of degrees in his classes and trained several people to use the system.
One of Hayashi's students was Hawayo Takata. On Christmas Eve 1900, a girl child was born on the island of Kauai in Hawaii. Her parents were Japanese sugar workers and immigrants named Kawamura. She was named Hawayo after her birthplace. She worked in the cane fields but was too small and weak to cope with the work. She helped to teach little children and then worked at a soda fountain counter. She then worked as a housemaid and later as housekeeper in a wealthy plantation owner's house. In March 1917 she married the plantation's accountant, Saichi Takata, and they had two little girls. In 1930, at the age of 34, Hawayo's husband died of a heart attack. Widowed young and having to assume the responsibility of raising two children, Hawayo developed nervous exhaustion and a gall bladder disease which required surgery. She also had respiratory problems that made the use of anaesthesia dangerous. Her parents had returned to Japan and when her sister died in 1935 she visited Japan to comfort her parents. She then entered a hospital in Tokyo preparatory to surgery. By this time she had developed appendicitis and a tumour. The night before 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. She asked the surgeon if there was any other way for her to heal. The surgeon, whose sister have been healed by Hayashi's practitioners, told her about Reiki and arranged for his sister to take her to Hayashi's clinic.
Hawayo Takata lived at the clinic for four months, healing completely in spirit, mind and body. When she asked to be trained in Reiki she was refused because she was a foreigner and Hayashi wanted Reiki to remain in Japan. She persisted with her pleas and, in the end, Hayashi relented and Hawayo was trained as a Reiki I channel in 1936. She worked in the clinic and in 1937 received the Reiki II degree after which she returned to Hawaii. Hayashi and his daughter came to visit her to help her start a Reiki clinic. For almost a year, Mrs. Takata and Hayashi offered classes, free lectures and demonstrations of Reiki. In February 1938, just before he left for Japan, Hayashi announced that Mrs. Takata was now a Reiki Master. Mrs. Takata worked for many years on Kauai, and in a clinic in Hawaii. She then moved to Honolulu.
In 1941 Hayashi summoned Mrs. Takata to Japan and named her his successor. He foresaw the entry of Japan into World War II and, not wanting to serve in the Imperial Japanese Navy, he voluntarily stopped his heart on 10th May 1941 in the presence of his family and students. Hayashi's wife Chie survived but the house and clinic were taken over by the occupying forces.
Reiki however survived, thanks to Hawayo Takata. In the years that followed, she travelled extensively, teaching classes in the first and second degrees. It was not until the 1970s that she began to initiate masters and, in the last decade of her life, she initiated 22 men and women as Reiki Masters. She lived to be 80 but looked much younger than her age. She died on 11th December 1980.
In Mrs.Takata's healing clinics, if a client was seriously ill and needed many healings, she trained someone in the family in Reiki to carry on the treatments. She did not allow her students to take notes and no two classes were ever the same. Mrs. Takata always charged her students, even her own family members, because she felt that people who did not pay for the healings and teaching did not value them and would not retain the healings. The teachers she trained continued to charge high prices.
After Hawayo's death her granddaughter, Phyllis Lei Furomoto took over and became head of the Reiki Alliance. Over the years different methods of teaching and attuning have evolved, each one claiming to be the authentic version. The fact is that all methods seem to work equally well. Usui Traditional REIKI is the closest to what Takata taught. In the early days, very few people were accepted for Traditional Reiki Master's training and even those who could afford the U.S. $10,000 fee had to be invited. In Canada and Australia the fee was $15,000. One system called Radiance Reiki has eleven degrees and claims to go to levels higher than those reached by Takata's teachings, with the cost increasing with each degree.
Reiki, as with every system of healing, will continue to evolve and
change. It is now a firmly established method of natural healing practised
world-wide. Practitioners derive a bonus benefit: when they are healing
someone else, they receive a healing themselves. While healing is usually
associated with human beings, Reiki pervades the whole Universe and works
not only on humans but also on plants, animals and everything else in the
Universe.