In the year 1862 Dr. Mikao Usui was giving a sermon at the University of Kyoto, Japan. After the service, two students asked him to explain how Jesus performed the miracles of healing and furthermore whether or not he could perform the same miracles. Dr. Usui was unable to answer them ‘yes.’ He felt he understood the Bible intellectually, yet he did not understand how Jesus healed.
This began Dr. Usui’s life quest. He left Japan and went to America and studied at the University of Chicago. During his seven years in America, he took a doctorate degree in theology. He tried to understand through the scriptures how Jesus performed miracles of healing and transformation but did not find the revelations he was looking for during this period of his life …
Returning home, he realised that the Buddha had performed the same type of miracles as Jesus. He too had healed the sick and had great control of energy. He channelled the power of God and the Universe.
Dr. Usui began to ask the different Buddhist sects if they could perform the miracles that Buddha performed, could they heal the body? They felt that healing of the spirit and of the body was not always directly connected. They concentrated on the spirit, and not the body. They felt that the body and the spirit were separate, and that the spirit was what needed to be healed and left the body to those of the healing arts. Dr. Usui finally went to visit a Zen monastery and he asked the same question of the head monk, “Do the Zen know how to heal the body.”
“Not anymore,” replied the man and explained that they have been concentrating so heavily on healing the spirit that they had forgotten how to heal the body. The monk felt that if Dr. Usui’s destiny were to rediscover how Buddha had healed the body, it would unfold before him. So Dr. Usui asked if he could remain at the Zen Monastery as a student and was accepted.
Under the guidance of the Zen Monks, he began reading the sutras, the writings, and teachings of Buddha.
Through his meditations, Dr. Usui was guided to learn Pali, Buddha was Indian, and his teachings were originally in this language. Having mastered the language he began to read the sutras in Pali but still found nothing in which he felt to be essential teaching or the key to healing. Again, guided by meditation, he was directed to learn the language of Sanskrit, the root of all language, which is possible where he would find the answer.
In a few years he had mastered the language of Sanskrit and began reading the teachings of the Tibetan Buddhists Sect from Tibetan Buddhists writings. Dr. Usui, realising that he had found the keys to healing went back to the head monk and asked his advice.
“Now that I have found what I’ve been looking for, how do I know that it is correct, and if so, how do I use it?” Through meditation, he and the monk were told that he should go to a holy mountain near Kyoto called Kurama.
Once at the mountain he was to meditate and fast for 21 days, during this period he would receive enlightenment and spiritual clarity. He gathered up a few belongings and made his pilgrimage from Tokyo to Kurama. He climbed the mountain and found a location facing east. Every morning he awakened before the sun rose and would throw away one of the 21 stones he had placed in front on his meditation location to keep count of the days. Each day he meditated and fasted.
On the 21st day he awakened to a darkened morning. It was like a new moon day when no light shone in the heavens before the breaking of the dawn. He prayed before throwing the last stone off the side of the mountain and asked for God’s confirmation of his findings and asked to be given the enlightenment to use the knowledge. As he threw the stone, a light appeared in the east, and began getting brighter and coming closer to him. He knew that the light had the healing power he was looking for, and if he was to receive what the light had to offer, he must allow the light to strike him.
He was given the opportunity to decide. Would he risk death to obtain the healing ability for which he had searched so long? He decided the ability to heal the sick would be of such great value that it would be worth risking death to receive it. The beam struck him in the forehead, knocking him unconscious. He came out of his physical body. Thinking he had died and ascended to heaven, he was aware that his entire field of vision was a rainbow of colour. Out of this rainbow came bubbles of gold, white, blue, and violet. Each of the different bubbles contained holographic Sanskrit characters that he uncovered in the writings of the Tibetan Buddhist teachings.
As he contemplated each symbol he received an attunement for that symbol and knowledge on its use. In this way, he was initiated into the use of the Reiki healing power. A voice said: “These are the keys to healing; learn them; and do not allow them to be lost.”
Awakening, he realised that he was still on earth and began making his way down the mountain vowing not to forget all he had seen and heard. In his excitement to descend and tell the head monk of the revelations, he stubbed his toe and reached down automatically to comfort the pain and to stop the bleeding. He found this happened very rapidly and that something was different about the energy from his hands; they became very hot. After healing his toe, he continued his pilgrimage down the mountain and feeling hungry, stopped at a lodge for cold rice and cold tea. A young girl served Dr. Usui; she had a bandage wrapped around her jaw and was in pain with toothache. She accepted healing from Dr. Usui, and very shortly the pain and swelling in her jaw subsided.
She was very happy and went off to tell her father, the proprietor. When he offered payment for his meal, Papa San refused saying, “Thank you sir, but I cannot accept the money. You have rendered unto my daughter a service for which I do not have the money to pay. Please accept the food in exchange for the healing services that you have rendered.”
Dr. Usui accepted the food in exchange for his services as a healing channel. Back at the monastery he successfully treated the head monk who was in bed, crippled with arthritis. Dr. Usui spent seven years taking care of sick people, mostly beggars, in the slums of Tokyo. He was a very dedicated and disciplined healer, working with the young and old alike, seeing many beautiful results take place.
He began to understand how Reiki flowed into the patient and how the body became well. One afternoon he took a walk to the edge of Beggar Kingdom and saw a young beggar who looked familiar; he was in fact the first beggar that Dr. Usui had ever healed. Dr. Usui asked, “I healed you and you’re still a beggar?”
The beggar looked at him and said. “Oh Dr. Usui, yes and I did just what you told me. I went out to the temple to receive a name; I went into society and began dealing with my Karma, doing just what you told me to do. I even got a job and soon married, but it was too much responsibility for myself.’
Dr. Usui turned around without continuing the conversation and returned to his room leaving the Beggars Kingdom immediately. As he walked back to the monastery the teachers who had greeted him on Kurama greeted him in spirit. They bestowed upon him a very important element the healing of the spirit and the responsibility of the patient in the healing process. He realised that he had done the reverse of the Buddhists by concentrating on healing the body and not the spirit. Ultimately, wellness is spirit in flesh charged with holy breath, taking full responsibility for ‘free wills’ choice.
This is the aim of the teachings of Dr. Usui who then practiced and taught Reiki around Japan for the remainder of his life. Before his transition around 1926, he gave master attunements to 16 teachers, one of whom was Dr. Chujiro Hayashi. He is buried in a Zen Temple in Tokyo.
Taken from 'Serenity in The Storm' Chapter Fourteen Page 191 - 198
