Gesamteinträge: 376 |
Gesamtdauer: 14:41:11
“FAP is a pacificst from early age.” Show his despair about his father and dad saying “never go to the army. ” RV: “In search of purpose he eventually took on the yok of responsibility of bridging East with West. The story will show how he struggled in this tension field and how he eventually concluded that he failed. Did he really? Or is his life’s work really something else, a significant contribution to the reconciliation between old traditions and modern age, between East and West. And does his struggle serve as a case-study in reconciliation? For the community in which it takes place and for the world at large? This documentary wants to find answers.”
2025-08-08 10:03
⏱ 00:00:00
This is extremely exciting, because it shows to me that the idea of reconciliation within the Reiki community has been on your mind - also with you having been involved and that you actually got involved to the point that you had Bert Hellinger personally make the constellation.
2025-09-24 11:28
⏱ 00:00:22
I put all my heart, all my love into it and fairly recently I realized that I can't do it anymore and I want to reset. Like the way you reset an electronic instrument. So 'reset to factory settings'. Start new. Erase the disk. Start new. I'm tired. I don't want all this old stuff anymore. I want to be present. I want to pay more attention to here, to now, to my unravelling, my development, my deepening my human experience. And I had the feeling that I can do that only if I stop my job as the Vice Representative of the Jikiden Reiki Institute
2025-09-24 11:42
⏱ 00:01:13
So that's it.
2025-09-24 11:37
⏱ 00:06:50
'No, that's not my style. I came to a decision and I'm throwing myself to a degree into the unknown.' So you're right. My style is I usually take the second step before the first. And then, okay, sometimes when you do that you fall. It's kind of natural. But I like that.
2025-09-24 13:14
⏱ 00:07:11
It's dishonest to me. My name is 'honesty'. Let me be frank with you. Honest.
2025-09-21 07:14
⏱ 00:07:17
Because I've always seen myself as the link between East and West. And it's a lot to carry.
2025-09-24 11:26
⏱ 00:07:24
'What's going to happen now?' But I trust and I know that you can't escape from your destiny. You can't avoid it. It will catch up with you anyhow.
2025-09-21 07:20
⏱ 00:07:36
What is to happen will unfold and we'll see and we will just be here and watch it unfold.
2025-09-21 07:24
⏱ 00:07:46
If people should ask me personally to tell them in one word what I think, I consider my calling in life or in the sound incarnation is, I would probably say initiator, not teacher but initiator.
2025-09-21 07:32
⏱ 00:08:05
It sounds a bit corny maybe. The only thing I care about is the love in my heart. Everything else is insubstantial. You come and you go empty handed. You don't take your money, you don't take your wealth, your power, your fame, your ... I don't care about any of those things, but I care about this, what is going on inside that expansiveness in the heart.
2025-09-21 07:35
⏱ 00:08:30
No, no, no! We don't pretend anything. Pretension hasn't helped anybody. We look at the things as they are.
2025-09-21 07:40
⏱ 00:08:38
With a lot of authenticity.
2025-09-17 17:50
⏱ 00:25:42
But I’m not a position. I’m just a human, just like anybody else.
2025-09-17 17:50
⏱ 00:43:46
Generally in a reconciliation process, people tend to not wanting to look at the transgression, rather move on to ‘let’s forget it’ (and thus they just gloss the injustice over). This is true in the Reiki community, too and is one of the resistances against my work when I insist on looking at the past. Thus, my quote in ‘A02 Mission Statement’: “We want to be cautious not to tear up old wounds. At the same time, we do not want to gloss over wrongdoings of the past.” I found an interesting quote from George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher, 1863-1952) which is also on the memorial plaque in Auschwitz): “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
This also ties in with Arjava’s exclamation “can’t we learn!?” in context with his pacifism, his father’s war trauma.
2025-08-15 16:19
⏱ 00:44:06
We want to shed light, we, the two of us, want to shed light on the past in order to nourish the reconciliation process in the here and now to liberate future generations from blemishes of the past, We are committed to honouring, even celebrating individual uniqueness
2025-09-21 10:33
⏱ 00:44:24
We want to be cautious not to tear up old wounds. At the same time, we do not want to gloss over wrongdoings of the past. It is a bit of a tightrope at times.
2025-09-24 14:44
⏱ 00:44:36
The values my parents instilled upon ... well, at least upon me - I don't know about my brother -
2025-08-05 07:23
⏱ 00:49:01
He is around. He is somewhere in Berlin. I don't have much contact with him.
2025-08-05 07:23
⏱ 00:54:27
Just after his high school diploma and then he spent all the war years in Russia. He got heavily injured twice. He almost died and then he spent three years in the Russian prison camp after that. So he came back in 1947 and he screamed until I was 15 about. He screamed every night dreaming of the war. Every night I would wake up from my father screaming from the top of his lungs. That made a big impression, a big impression on me.
2025-09-24 14:53
⏱ 00:55:02
They went through incredible times and when I see what's happening now in the world with the war in Ukraine and in the Middle East, I'm just thinking how is it possible that we never learn? How is that humanly possible? Because I grew up with the results of what that does to you.
2025-09-24 15:13
⏱ 00:55:23
So, this was my last adventure in school. So, as I told you earlier, I was kicked out of high school because I wasn't cooperating, I wasn't doing anything, I was so lazy, cannot imagine. And the reason for that really is that I've never learned to do something that I don't like to do and to do something that I don't see the purpose of. And in my adult life that's been very helpful. Fantastic.
2025-09-24 15:34
⏱ 00:55:56
The time I grew up in Germany there was lots of police presence. It was not a nice place to be. I remember there was a politician from the Liberal Party that lived kind of close to where I grew up and they had frequent police, what you call it, patrolling the streets and several times they put us against my own garage, like this with the machine gun in the back and frisking us and all that. And I thought, all I want is to get out of here. As far away as possible. I don't like this place.
2025-09-24 15:36
⏱ 00:56:34
So, instead of running away I ended up in hospital. And then started to read. The literature at the time was Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. We're in 1976 now. Yes, correct. And Carlos Castaneda and this kind of things. And I started to think. Started to exercise not only my legs and my lungs from smoking, but started to exercise my brain and my heart. And I thought, oh wow! This was the first encounter ...
2025-09-24 15:41
⏱ 00:57:07
Then, of course, it's always been women who got me into trouble in my life, always. It's their fault. Nothing to do with me.
2025-09-24 15:58
⏱ 00:57:20
'Okay.' So I did. And then he taught me Raja Yoga for a couple of years. Between 16 and 18. And that really set me off. Fantastic. So meanwhile, I had gotten kicked out of school.' And then thought, 'What I really would like to do is to have an organic farm.'
2025-09-24 17:42
⏱ 00:57:39
Can I do an apprenticeship with you?' He looked at me and said, 'You know what? Do a conventional farming apprenticeship first.' 'Then you know why you shouldn't do that.'
2025-09-24 17:43
⏱ 00:57:54
At that time, my brother left Germany on the hippie trail, partly with a magic bus that went from London and Amsterdam to Kathmandu, overland and somewhere in Turkey he got off. He spent some time in Greece and in Turkey. Then he went overland from Turkey through Iran. This was just before the Russians invaded Afghanistan. He made it through Afghanistan and somehow he ended up in Poona with the notorious Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. And then the first TV documentary appeared, people screaming and being completely crazy.
2025-09-24 20:55
⏱ 00:58:42
And they showed this in Germany on television: this is what's happening there. And we're watching and we're thinking, 'Oh my God, now the boy has gone completely crazy!' Poor Martin! Poor Martin, now he has lost the plot completely. He was alwas eccentric and always a worry for my parents, because nobody could control him. And now he was in this insane cult.
2025-09-24 21:04
⏱ 00:59:09
And we would go, 'Oh no, what are we going to do?' So we decided, my parents and me, that I would go and take a look if he is okay. You're 19 now? I'm 18. I'm still doing the farming apprenticeship. To look if he's okay, and if he's okay ... okay, good. If he has found a place ... My parents were amazing! They're like, 'if he finds a place where he is happy, we're good.' One worry less. And if he's not okay, see if you keep persuade him to come back.
2025-09-24 21:23
⏱ 00:59:45
So I went in my spring vacation to Poona. I still remember entering the gate. They had this beautiful wooden, massive wooden gate. It opened up, when you walk in there, it was like 'boom', you entered like a time-warp space. I can't explain it. It was magical really. I took one look around and I thought, I never wanted to leave from here ever again. Magnetic to the max. I was looking at ... There were so many people, there were maybe 3000 people there at the time, working at the ashram, doing psychotherapy groups, doing meditations, meditation camps. Any kind of new age ... Anything that you could possibly think of you could receive treatments or sessions there, or learn it from really good people. So I looked around at the people at the ashram, and I thought, they really reminded me of those Zen kind of characters, I thought, 'I found my place, that's it, I want to stay here.' So instead of saving my brother, I saved myself. What an irony, you know, there he goes to save his brother in Poona and ends up staying there. I found that very amusing.
2025-09-24 21:42
⏱ 01:01:06
So, I’m looking at him, I go, ‚I don’t know‘ and he starts to smile and he says, ‚Don’t worry, I’m back at the right time.‘
2025-09-24 20:54
⏱ 01:13:38
So, I'm back there. I still go to the farming, now all in red clothes and the farmer is thinking, 'What the banana is wrong with this guy? Why is he wearing only red clothes?' And then after about ... September, 5 months or so, I'm waking up in the middle of the night, laying on my back, I never sleep on my back, I always sleep on my right side, I wake up, I feel this very strong presence in the room, I think, 'What in the world is this?' I open my eyes and I see Bhagwan sitting in a big chair, kind of like this, that he looks at me, he says, 'Come back immediately.' And then I went back to sleep. In the morning, I called the farmer, I said, 'I'm so sorry, I love you, I love your work ... but I can't anymore. I have to do something.' Very quick. Boom, like that. My parents were like ... (astonishment), because I loved it. So it was the first time I stopped doing something that I loved. Now is the second time.
2025-09-25 13:53
⏱ 01:14:54
I went back. Instead of bringing my brother, I come back in red clothes with the wearing a picture of the Indian guru,
2025-09-24 22:40
⏱ 01:28:20
I refused to go to the army. I won, I went there all in a red robe wearing Osho's picture, saying, 'I don't want to go to the army, my master, my spiritual master is Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. He is against soldiers, he's against army. Here are all these books where he talks about this and that.'
2025-09-25 13:58
⏱ 01:28:40
'What do you do when you meditate?' Somebody of the secretaries before my court case, had told me that the main judge was deaf, was a little deaf. So he said, 'You have to speak up!' So when he asked me, 'What do you do when you meditate?' I screamed at him: 'NOTHING!'
2025-09-25 21:28
⏱ 01:28:57
for finding out who he is and then to share that with others.
2025-09-24 22:28
⏱ 01:40:15
I went back home to Germany, but before ... I go back.
2025-09-24 22:28
⏱ 01:51:00
He called it Rajneesh Neo-Sannyas. 'Sannyasin' is a recluse in India, somebody who is on the path of enlightenment to leave society behind and
2025-09-24 22:28
⏱ 02:02:01
And then he asked me, 'What does your dad say about that?'
2025-09-25 13:30
⏱ 02:06:27
I said, 'My dad, until three years ago, was screaming every night from his nightmares from the war. Do you have any other questions?' And he said, 'No, no, it's okay. You can go out and we'll call you back in.' I didn't even make it to the door, they said, 'Okay, okay, okay, we really don't want you,
2025-09-25 21:33
⏱ 02:06:47
So, I went to Frankfurt from Düsseldorf and I remember standing at the passport control thinking, 'Oh man, I hope they're letting me out, I hope they don't know that I'm supposed to do my social work, that they're not connected. I hope they let me go, they let me go.' So, I was a bit shaky. And then the guy looked at me and went: 'Out'. So I'm in Czechoslovakia. Only in red with this picture of Bhagwan and I took the subway somewhere and one lady sitting next to me, she says, 'Oh, is that Karl Marx?' (laughter) They both have beards.
2025-09-25 21:43
⏱ 02:07:24
Gone! I had escaped. I went there really thinking that I am never going to come back, I'm going to stay here for the rest of my life with Bhagwan trying to figure out who I am.
2025-09-25 21:47
⏱ 02:07:38
And the Vipassana retreat was to be my last 10 days of sitting, 16 hours a day. Boy, was it beautiful, I loved it! It was the closest I got to be in a monk that I ever got to. But it was only close because Poona was a place where any button that could be pushed in you would be pushed. Any situation was used to get you out of your comfort zone, to freak you out, to get ... One of the first things was: the bathrooms were not for men and women, they were for everybody.
2025-09-25 22:02
⏱ 02:08:20
They always wanted to take you out of your comfort zone and check who are you really. Are you a gardener? Are you a doctor? Are you an intellectual? Are you ...? But what is behind all of that? You start to look at that and start paying attention to it and start exploring that incredible spaciousness that is there inside that includes everything. That is just pure consciousness. That's the idea. Drugs and sex orgies and whatever don't have a place in this. They might be good for exploration. You try it out, you try once or twice and then you have to find your own nectar inside. You cannot rely on chemicals or on other people to give you this, but it must be developed inside. After my leaf collection, I knew it's just temporary. They're just checking me out. It's part of the job. After a while I started to enjoy it. I started to talk to all the other Indian, low caste leaf collectors. Talking to them and joking with them and sitting out there smoking an Indian cigarette with them. It was nice. One day they said, 'Okay, now you can work in the garden, in the veggie garden.' Then for about a year or so I grew Osho's vegetables. Sometimes I would bring them to his house and bring them to the kitchen to be prepared. That was very nice, to grow his food. He had certain likes and things that he liked. He really liked coriander, but the coriander had to be harvested when it was this big like sprouts. He liked carrots, he liked strawberries. We used to grow these beautiful organic produce.
2025-09-25 22:38
⏱ 02:10:24
He said, 'Make the garden so beautiful that the master can walk in at any moment and you don't have to feel shy.' When he said that, I had some kind of 'aha' experience. I thought, 'I'm going to make my whole life like that.' So beautiful, that the master or somebody like that, somebody who represents this clarity and this love and this beauty can walk into my life ... ... and you don't need to feel ashamed. You don't need to feel ashamed. You can feel like, 'Okay, I did my best. With my mistakes.' I've been doing that ever since.
2025-09-25 22:49
⏱ 02:11:07
There are no highlights in this video. Arjava's dedication to refuse the army and to do civil service is shown and he says some critical words about Sheela - Osho's most controversial secretary.
2025-08-17 16:11
⏱ 02:11:07
Okay, so, in 1985, November or so, Osho got deported from the US. At the time I had an American girlfriend, Lino, who was from Oregon. Both of us knew that something was cooking. Both of us knew that something was wrong. So, we had prepared our getaway a few months before it actually happened.
2025-09-26 08:10
⏱ 02:11:37
I'm like, 'Oh man, again.' So he left Nepal. He went, I think, to Crete, where he had lots of trouble again because he was talking in public about the Orthodox Church. (groans) And the Archbishop of Crete said, 'If the police doesn't take him away, we're going to dynamite his house.' That's how he upset people. That was his tool. Upsetting people. He liked that. That was his strategy to get you to think to… Trigger people. Yeah, to trigger, to get you to look at yourself, what am I doing ...
2025-09-26 08:17
⏱ 02:12:19
Then I met one of my future wife's girlfriends who I was crazily in love with but it didn't work out. One of her friends, Chetna, was consoling me ... because of my unhappy love story. Chetna being Japanese? Yes, she was consoling me. She had also just broken up with her boyfriend at the time and before we knew it we ended up together and sometime later we got married and moved to Japan. First we went to Germany together. She didn't really enjoy Germany. She said, 'Even the dogs have a face like this.' (laughter) She had a really good sense of humour. She said, 'Why don't we go to Japan and start a language school?'
2025-09-26 08:30
⏱ 02:13:08
So, from being fired at the main gate I went straight into Osho's compound. And then went sitting sometimes in front of his door, in front of his window, at the gate to his house. So that's the bodyguard job. That was the bodyguard job. And we were also supposedly guarding him during the discourses.
2025-09-26 08:37
⏱ 02:13:30
Sitting close to him was a psychedelic experience. You cannot imagine. I mean, you were seeing things that were not there. Because his presence had such an impact? His presence is overpowering! I have never felt anything like that before or after. Incredible. So, Osho, still to this day, is your guru? Absolutely.
2025-09-26 09:00
⏱ 02:13:54
Ok, the essence. What is his essence? Maybe the easiest way to say is: Be here now - be present. Don't act out of your past conditioning.
2025-09-26 10:22
⏱ 02:14:05
We always think that we have free will and that we are acting out of the now but really, why are you not putting your hands on the hot stove? It's not your freedom of choice. It's because you've experienced it, So you're acting out of the past all the time.
2025-09-26 10:23
⏱ 02:14:25
The mind that is ... The heart-mind that is in the present moment. And this is what Osho tried to teach us and this is what Reiki is for me. This learning to keep the mind in the present, not to let it slip into the past or into the future. It's everywhere.
2025-09-26 10:25
⏱ 02:14:46
You just want to share that. For me Reiki is that. It is not about creating a big movement or making lots of money or having lots of students or becoming famous. None of that has any substance. But the thing is, Usui sensei's method comes out of enlightenment and leads to enlightenment. That's the purpose. Otherwise we're wasting our time. If it's just about curing a headache, take an aspirin! It's not about that. You can use also Reiki to help you with that. But that's maybe not the foremost purpose of the idea. This is a side effect. Wonderful, fantastic! Our kids grew up with 99.9% just hands on healing. It's wonderful. But the real thing is what is happening to you. How can you be yourself? This is what Reiki is to me. And this is what Osho was trying to do with us. And this is what any spiritual teacher who is worth their name wants to do ... wants to show you yourself ... wants to put the mirror in front of you so you can see yourself. Everything else is a waste of time.
2025-08-22 15:48
⏱ 02:16:08
It was great fun, but Chetna wanted to go and start her own school in Japan. And I thought, 'Okay, let's go to Japan, start the school. I will help her and then I will do my own thing.' I wasn't sure what that 'own thing' was going to be.
2025-08-22 15:55
⏱ 02:16:25
What I didn't understand then is that when you get touched with Reiki, somehow it touches your soul. ... it tickles. It tickles your soul. Once your soul is tickled, you can't forget it.
2025-09-26 10:57
⏱ 02:16:43
And then I forgot about it until one day in 1990 ... either end of '91 or beginning of '92, Raj, my brother, called me from Germany, saying that, 'Hey, you know, Arjava, I think it would be good for you to do Reiki.'
2025-08-22 16:24
⏱ 02:17:06
So I thought, Oh, I didn't know that you do Reiki, when my brother called. 'Yeah, I've been doing it for years.' And he said, 'I really think that I must teach that to you, because I feel stuck and somehow I have a feeling that if I share it with you, I will come out of it ... stuck.' And I'm thinking, 'What is he saying?' But he ... I didn't understand. He often said enigmatic things like that, that you couldn't really follow. He has his own logic. So I thought, 'What...' And he said, 'What do you like that?' I said, 'Yeah, I would like to learn, but I'm just learning to do something for myself.' He said, 'Oh, maybe you will be teaching.' 'Oh, no, I'm just doing it for myself.' He was laughing and I'm thinking, 'Does he see something or realize?', because he's got psychic ... 'Does he realize something that I don't see yet?' Anyway, we made an appointment. I came in the end of the year, end of December something. '92 I went to Berlin to learn Reiki in Berlin.
2025-08-22 16:23
⏱ 02:18:18
I'm sitting and laughing to myself, 'What am I doing? I'm a German who goes ... who lives in Japan, who goes to Germany to learn a Japanese healing art, to take it back to Japan. It's crazy! So, I had to ... I had my good laugh there, thinking this situation is really ridiculous. But I went, I learned then Reiki 1, 2 and the teachers level in one week. I think probably it was four days or something like that. And I enjoyed what I learned and then took it back to Japan and the first person I initiated was Chetna. Okay. So, I taught her Reiki 1, and Reiki 2. When I showed her the distant healing symbols, she looked at it and she said, 'This is wrong.'
2025-08-22 16:22
⏱ 02:19:16
So I started to doubt what I had learned from my brother.
2025-08-22 16:18
⏱ 02:30:37
Nothing highlighted. Comment: Content (intimate relationship between teacher and student) might be promo-material for archive videos.
2025-08-22 16:37
⏱ 02:30:37
So I had my doubts. Basically, I started to research not because I wanted to write a book to become famous, not because I wanted to make a movement, make a change, become this or that, nothing at all, zero, nothing, no implication, no aim whatsoever in this direction. It was just the doubts that were sitting on my chest, going like, 'I like the Reiki practice, but the way it's done ...' And you were teaching it now? After ... So, Chetna was my first student and then afterwards I started to teach but I was really uncomfortable ... teaching something that I haven't got really in my heart.
2025-09-26 11:32
⏱ 02:31:22
After a while, I found out that in 1984, almost ten years earlier, there had been a teacher of the Radiance Technique, Mrs Mitsui, Mieko Mitsui. She was one of the teachers of Barbara ... working in Barbara Ray's Radiance Technique. She... A Japanese lady coming from America, I believe. I don't know if she was first or second generation Japanese, I don't know. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So, she went to Japan to teach Reiki and she taught only Reiki 1 and Reiki 2 in Tokyo, and I think in Osaka also. And ... People who wanted to learn more - she came for maybe 2 years or 3 years - people who wanted to learn more were told that they needed a university degree, if they wanted to become a teacher. They needed to speak English. They had to pay $10,000. At the time was a lot of money in the 80s. And they had to travel to New York to do the training. All these things were impossible. Most people didn't speak English, maybe 99% didn't speak English. Then they had to have the degree, then to have the money, then to travel to the States, but that was too much. So nobody did. And they were waiting for 9 years for somebody to appear to teach teachers in the country. And that happened to be me, so I was not the first. The bed was made, but I didn't know.
2025-09-26 11:49
⏱ 02:33:09
So we started to teach, and as I said, my first student was my former wife. When we did the master initiation, and I taught her how to initiate others, she said, 'This is too logical. We don't think logically. This was made by a Westerner, I swear! I am sure, because we don't think like that. It's so structured, it's so...' Japanese people, they think in wonderful quantum jumps. All of a sudden, you think ... 'How did we get here?' I love it, but it's really not logical. It's totally... No words, I don't have words. So, Chetna said, 'It can't be.' So we had this doubt. And out of this doubt we started to research more and more and more, and then people didn't know about Reiki, or they said, 'Oh, it's this American thing', that at some point I just thought, 'It's all ... The whole thing, it's just fabricated, it doesn't exist.' And Usui sensei is a person who probably doesn't exist.' Sorry (gassho). I thought that. Then I kind of gave up, but I liked the teaching, I liked the practice, so there were a few personal friends of ours who said 'Hey ... did you go to Germany to do Reiki? Was it nice? We'd like to learn.'
2025-09-26 11:59
⏱ 02:34:40
So that was the first group of people in '93, in I think April or something, I taught. A bunch of Japanese friends. I liked the teaching. I enjoyed it, but because I didn't feel comfortable with the history, I left that part out. I said, 'Okay, look, the history sounds like fairy tales to me. They say that Usui sensei was this and that, but I don't think so, but I let you know when I find more.' That's when we really started to look.
2025-08-23 14:55
⏱ 02:35:16
but for the practice of Reiki, it’s not that terribly relevant to know the history.
2025-09-26 11:29
⏱ 02:47:28
Yes, so I did it like that. Of course now I spend a lot of time talking about history, because my whole life is intertwined with all the historical research of more than 30 years. That's what we will come to. That, of course, has been a turning point in your particular life, because here you are, early 90s, full of doubts, full of questions, you're teaching. You have to blend out the history aspect because you sense that can't be everything, and that eventually drove you to doing a lot of research, which ended with ... or which started really with the publication of a very important book in 1997. In a way, I have the impression, please correct me ... So, you're now in the early 90s, and in a way you were the beneficiary of a situation, which that teacher you mentioned, Mrs. Mitsui, created, that you have all these Reiki Alliance people waiting to continue in Japan, these are Japanese people, and here you are now, and you're coming back from Berlin, you're teaching what you learned ... How long did this go on? And how was your seminar this time, because later - I don't know when chronologically exactly - there were some questions of Raj's way, how he got into Reiki?
2025-09-26 12:09
⏱ 02:48:59
I didn't know there was a bed and I didn't know that it was made. Which deserves to be emphasised. You weren't an opportunist taking consciously advantage of a situation. I had no idea. It just turned out to be like that. We started to teach, we thought, 'OK, how do we go about it?' We had no idea. We had a language school. That was our business.
2025-08-24 08:01
⏱ 02:49:22
So we advertised in both of these magazines and then people from all over the place started to contact us and we were going like, 'What is going on here?' We didn't expect that. We thought once in a while somebody would come but people were coming from Tokyo, from Osaka, even from Okinawa, from the very south of Japan, close to Taiwan and from all over the place. I don't know how many people we taught. A few hundred but maybe more. I don't know because when I left Japan in 2002 I didn't take my records. Oh really? You didn't take them consciously or you just lost them? I didn't think of it. So I would have to go and ask Chetna if I wanted to have an answer. She probably kept the records. I'm not sure if she kept that. She may have.
2025-08-24 07:59
⏱ 02:50:20
it's not really what I could suggest to anybody. So I called Raj and said, 'Hey, are there any new books on Reiki? Do you know anything? Because this guy, one of my students, wants to do a book on Reiki.' And Raj said, 'Nah, nah, there's nothing here. You've got to do it yourself!' And I'm thinking, 'Ah!' So he often got me into really good things. Actually I took note of that, this ' go-write-it-yourself'. It must have been strong statement. Yeah, and he is like ... an initiator. He has the charisma to ... maybe not persuade or push or ... make people do something that he is not prepared to do for whatever reason. And the people do it. I've seen that many times with him. It's quite a skill.
2025-08-24 07:58
⏱ 02:51:21
So that was the birth hour of what would later become Reiki Fire, the first book.
2025-08-24 07:56
⏱ 03:04:32
This is anecdotal, very entertaining, historically important (Arjava meets the President of the Gakkai without realising who she was and getting the crucial info about the grave). Maybe for promo-material …
2025-08-24 08:41
⏱ 03:04:32
So we're going to the school and suddenly I see a white Toyota van with big letters: R, E, I, K, I. My heart goes trrrr! And I'm thinking in my mind, 'Oh my God, finally I got it.'
2025-09-26 12:52
⏱ 03:04:49
So after that, it was kind of a key experience for me. I said, 'Okay, I give up.' Enough! I stop. I stop looking for it. I can't find anything. I had looked in the phone book in Sapporo. We had six pages of Usuis. In Tokyo, they had 30 pages in the phone book of Usuis! What you're going to do, call them all? Impossible.
2025-09-26 12:53
⏱ 03:05:15
‚You know what? I have the phone number of somebody who’s been practicing Reiki for 65 years!‘
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 03:11:20
'If you promise me that you don't tell where you got the number, I will give it to you.'
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 03:17:42
So, he gives me the number. Then I talk to Chetna. I say, ‚Hey, you know, how about … Can you call this person now, this Mrs. Koyama?‘
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 03:24:21
‚I’ve been asked so many times by people from outside, from abroad, to meet and I always refuse and I will refuse you too!‘
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 03:36:14
'Okay, Usui sensei was born 1865, August 15th in Gifu Prefecture. He was married, had two kids. He had a life of many ups and downs, big success, big failure. He was very warm-hearted. He was a good speaker. People loved to listen to him. People used to hang on to his clothes when he was talking. Because he can't ... '
2025-09-26 12:54
⏱ 03:36:39
And that he was very funny, that his students were laughing all the time.
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 03:49:52
But in the conversation she also told us that he was buried at the Pure Land Buddhist graveyard, temple plus graveyard in Tokyo.
2025-09-26 12:26
⏱ 04:03:36
And in the tape that Takata sensei talked about the history, she also says that all the practitioners of Reiki in Japan died in World War II. There's nobody left. So, now we found at least the single one surviving member. This Mrs. Koyama, whoever she was. But she had given us ... the name of Usui sensei's resting place. So I thought, 'Ah, okay, maybe, maybe I can find something'.
2025-09-26 12:58
⏱ 04:04:11
(speaks Japanese) 'It's a beautiful grave.'
2025-09-26 12:59
⏱ 04:04:18
Five minutes ago, I knew very little. And now I have Usui sensei’s grandson’s address and phone number.
2025-09-26 12:56
⏱ 04:11:47
And we went ,,, he took us there. And we arrived and suddenly I see this three, three and a half meter tall memorial stone with the inscription, two and a half meters wide. I'm standing there going, like, 'Oh, my God!'
2025-08-25 08:53
⏱ 04:12:06
And this is the document I gave you before lunch, the transcription of that in her handwriting. And then from that we translated it into first English and then later on into German. That was incredible because it was really was the first time we had something written about him. That was a major breakthrough or THE major breakthrough, which of course - when we get to 1997, the publication of your first book - was a very central source of information. This was the first one! The one that blew me away, the one that made it clear that he did very much exist. On the memorial it stated that he had more than 2000 students. I thought, 'Wow! More than 2000 students! There must be more, not only the one Koyama sensei whom we had talked about.'
2025-08-28 07:35
⏱ 04:13:07
I see you now three years or so, you've been teaching Reiki in Japan ... I don't know at which point, but somewhere along the line it is said that it became apparent to you that the Western lineage operating from Raj had some doubts. And ... I find it difficult to formulate a question around this at this point, but we will get there sooner or later. In 1994 ... maybe it's a good time to address it - you have to tell me - because the question here revolves around you acquiring another Western line, because there was some question marks about Raj's.
2025-08-28 07:34
⏱ 04:13:54
Then we called them, and Usui sensei's grandson's wife answered. She said, 'They don't know anything, I don't know anything about my husband's grandfather, because when my mother-in-law died, she left a clause in the will that the name of my father-in-law (Usui sensei) should never be mentioned in this house after my death. And I (the Usui sensei's grandson's wife) married him after his mom had already passed. And because of the clause in the will, the Usui Mikao was never discussed in our house. I know absolutely nothing. Zero. I know nothing. So, please don't dig around in this painful part of our family history. I would like to help you but I don't know nothing. Sorry.' And she said, 'I'm tired' and I didn't really understand what 'I'm tired' meant. I ... it was an educated guest at other people, must have asked her. And her husband lived at that time. Yes. And was he willing to talk? No. More of that later, because I met him.
2025-09-26 13:21
⏱ 04:15:27
Because later - tomorrow, day after tomorrow - we'll speak about Tokyo Yokoi, this new book. One of the speculations there is ... This incident - that there was a taboo around Mikao Usui's name in his own family - is being used as an indication that there may be more to the story than what meets the eye. In other words, they're using it ... You have no idea why this was the case?
2025-08-28 08:07
⏱ 04:16:02
Usui sensei's youngest brother's granddaughter sent me an email and set up a meeting with me. And her grandfather was one of the Shihans in the Usui association. So they worked together. Okay. So, he worked with one of his brothers. So there was no conflict in the whole family, or taboo, or anything like that. He was one of the people who was propelling Reiki and he continued having a Reiki centre until ... until 18 years after Usui sensei died. Until 1944. After World War II, he didn't open it again because it had become illegal. Yeah. So, there's nothing like that. We don't know what the ... we really don't know what the issue was. I had a suspicion, but I don't know if I even want to say it because it's just a suspicion. But I get it from you that even your suspicion is not an indication that those reasons are of importance to us today. They may be purely personal matters within the family they've had. Not at all. So for example, what we know is that Usui sensei left one beautiful document, which is what he gave to his students. It starts with something that's called Kokai Denju. Kokai Denju means public teaching. It says, 'This is a declaration why I teach in public.' It's kind of Usui sensei's mission statement. It's quite dramatic. In it he says, 'In the past, when somebody had been given a spiritual secret by the universe as a present, it was the custom of them to use it for their family and for the financial well-being of the offspring. And I am breaking with this. I am stopping this because this is wrong. This is not the way it should be. And I will teach anyone!'
2025-08-28 08:02
⏱ 04:18:13
And he broke with that. He didn't want that. So that could have been a reason. But I don't know. Maybe it was strictly personal. Maybe they didn't like each other. Who knows!
2025-08-28 08:00
⏱ 04:18:25
And we are going like, 'Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai, what is that?' 'Who is that?' And he said, 'Well, that's an association that Usui-sensei founded, and he was the first president of it.' We're going, 'Ha ... ?! There is such a place, and there are people in it?' 'Yeah, yeah!' He said, 'And my relative is one of the teachers.' 'If you want, we can organize a meeting with him, but if you want to see him ... (Kozo Ogawa)', he said, 'Let me call him and organize a meeting.'
2025-08-28 14:43
⏱ 04:19:00
What to ask this person? What do you want to know about Reiki? Where are the missing pieces? Did I miss something? Obviously, we wanted to know about Takata sensei, about Hayashi sensei, about the successorship, about the symbols, about the ... Initiation. Initiation, all the questions that you might possibly have.
2025-08-28 14:42
⏱ 04:19:22
So then things became more and more complicated. Really complicated, because what he wrote about the history didn't match the history that I had learned. And when we heard about the practice it didn't match the practice that I had learned. Very soon I felt discouraged, cheated, let down, thinking that I have learned the completely wrong thing, and I will never be able to learn the right, 'right' thing. I was not happy, because I was a bit heartbroken. So now, about 30 years later, I'm looking at my hands, and I'm going like, 'The Reiki that comes out of here doesn't have a label.' And it doesn't matter where I've learned it, and it doesn't matter where anybody for that matter has learned it, and it doesn't matter who their teacher is, and what their lineage is, as long as they have been properly initiated. It is all the same. Beautiful! So, you cannot learn the wrong Reiki, there is no wrong Reiki.
2025-08-28 14:41
⏱ 04:20:40
I've learned meanwhile that unless you document it, it means nothing.
2025-09-27 11:52
⏱ 04:21:15
I was frustrated in the beginning when we talked to Ogawa sensei, because I thought that I learned the wrong type of Reiki. I learned to do it wrong, not only the history but the practice. I learned it wrong. And I would never be able to learn the right way because I already knew from my knowledge of Japanese culture that the chances of being accepted into a traditional Japanese art as a foreigner are about this big.
2025-09-28 10:02
⏱ 04:21:50
whatever comes out of those hands doesn't have a label. It doesn't have so-and-so Reiki. It doesn't matter whether you learned it from this person or that person, if you learned it from a Japanese person, from an American person, from an Inuit, it's always the same Reiki.
2025-09-28 10:03
⏱ 04:22:06
What comes out of our hands is just the pure life force. And it's beautiful. So, you can't have the wrong Reiki. It's not possible. Or the better Reiki. Or the better or accelerated Reiki. Reiki:
2025-09-28 10:04
⏱ 04:22:21
So you don't have to wait for the waterfall to come to your house. Hopefully not. But you get the Reiki person. This is kind of a typical Shinto type of idea. Where the ancient people, they used to go to a Shinto sanctuary when they were not feeling well.
2025-09-28 10:05
⏱ 04:22:42
The Shinto shrine is built around a natural phenomena. A beautiful tree, a spring, a waterfall, a beautiful rock. Where the people when they were not feeling well were going and leaning against the tree. (Deep sigh.) Suddenly feeling better. Because they were taking in that ... energy from the waterfall.
2025-09-28 10:05
⏱ 04:23:08
Very beautiful. So this is what we do. We are the extended hands of some beautiful natural phenomena. Like that! You are the waterfall giving Reiki to the client. You are the big tree, the spring.
2025-08-28 15:01
⏱ 04:23:26
How far is the Jikiden Reiki's archive, if there is such a thing, prepared and willing to collaborate with other scholars? So, it's not being done professionally at all. So, most of my research is in here.
2025-08-29 08:16
⏱ 04:23:45
The real value is in here, it's so intertwined with my life. I don't even think it's so important, but one of the research projects is this, what we're doing now. So, a lot of the information will go out to people who are interested. Then we're good and then my office can burn down.
2025-08-29 08:15
⏱ 04:24:07
I'm sitting there thinking, 'Whoa! I learned the wrong thing. How do I deal with this?' So the Usui Association probably is not going to take me in. For sure not. And then very soon we found out that they had rules, very strict rules. One of the rules was, if you make your money with Reiki you cannot be a member. Is this is still today a rule? It's still a rule today. So that rules me out. Even if I wanted to become a member, I cannot. Plus: when you become a member and you are a teacher - if they teach you the upper levels - then you can teach only in the Association, not outside. And I cannot do neither the first nor the second, so I can never be a member of that.
2025-08-29 08:14
⏱ 04:24:54
And he taught her techniques, which are techniques that I've been teaching for many many years as so-called Japanese-Reiki techniques. They come from Usui sensei and he started to teach them to Shizuko and Shizuko and taught them to me. So, these techniques - and I'm sorry that I answered this Japanese-style beating around the bush and coming to the point after half an hour, now is the point. These techniques I included after I practiced them for a while in my teaching. For example, gassho meditation focusing on the point where the two middle fingers meet, breathing exercise, cleansing and so on. So slowly, slowly I included more things that I thought had been missing from what I previously learned.
2025-08-29 08:13
⏱ 04:25:51
You must have felt or even known that you're going to alienate a few people with 'Reiki Fire'. Why did you publish it? You know, I didn't think that at all. You know what I thought? I thought I earned the champagne corks flying through the air. I thought people would like it. I was very naive. I thought I was doing everybody a favour and people say, 'Finally we know something! How great.' That's what I expected, I didn't expect antagonistic things. But let's go back a little bit, because there's some important information that I haven't shared yet. So, when I made the contract with the German publishing company, of course the first person I called was Walter to say, 'Thank you so much for making that contact. I'm overwhelmed. I didn't expect that.' And the second person I called was Raj, my brother, saying, 'You won't believe what happened! They took it! They want it. They'll publish it. I can't believe that.' At first he seemed happy about it.
2025-08-30 10:23
⏱ 04:27:03
So he said, 'You can't use my name as your teacher.' And I said, 'Ha, why not? I mean, I learned from you. Why not say your name?'
2025-08-30 10:16
⏱ 04:36:34
He said, 'That. You're not to use my name at all!' He hung up and I did talk to him for five years after this. He was so mad. And I didn't know why. But I found out later.
2025-08-30 10:21
⏱ 04:36:45
'My teacher doesn't want me to mention their name ... for reasons that I really don't understand.'
2025-09-28 10:28
⏱ 04:49:36
And I left it with that. Then the book had just come out, the 'Reiki Fire'. Ahh... This is a whole new chapter. I think we better do this a little bit later. As you want, yeah. Well, the chapter ... the book came out and what you then experienced as a consequence? That is an important story. I would like you to tell the story. I would like you to have space and time to share with us the injustices which were done at that point. Because the public needs to know that. Yeah. Maybe we do it tomorrow.
2025-08-30 10:18
⏱ 04:50:12
About ... the 'Reiki Fire' came out in the spring of '97. A few months after it was out, I got a phone call from my old friend, Ageh Popat, who was also friends with Raj. Actually, they were friends from the '70s in India. He said, 'Arjava, I have to tell you something.' 'I went out for a beer with your brother yesterday, and maybe he had one too many. And he said to me that he made up the attunement process, that he never learned it. He learned Reiki 1 and 2 and maybe 3A, the Master symbol but the attunement, he said, he made it up.'
2025-08-30 10:54
⏱ 04:50:55
So, he made an appointment here in Switzerland to do the teacher's training with these guys who were, at the time, members of the Reiki Alliance. And then when he came back, he called me and said, 'Arjava, come quickly. It's all different from what we have learned. The initiation process, it's all different. Come and re-learn with me.' So, I flew to Germany to do the teacher's training again with Ageh. I just looked at my certificates, January 7th or 9th or something of '98.
2025-08-30 10:53
⏱ 04:51:34
Yes. I got that. So, your Reiki lineage, therefore, is a new lineage going through your friend Ageh? From '98. From '98. Okay. From '98. And your question was, 'What did you do? How did you deal with that in Japan?' And how did ...? I called my students and I said, 'There's a problem with my brother's Reiki lineage. We don't really know ...' Because everybody who had asked him had received a different answer.
2025-08-30 10:52
⏱ 04:52:08
So I called my students and I said, 'Look, there's a problem with the lineage. I went to have myself re-initiated into the new teachers' training. And I'm happy to teach you.
2025-08-30 10:51
⏱ 04:52:23
That's how we did it, but not everybody came. Not all the people who had learned. And some of those who did not come back and get re-initiated by you ...? They continued. They continued teaching? Teaching what they had learned from me the first time. Now, the problem is I never got to the bottom of that. I don't know.
2025-08-30 10:50
⏱ 04:52:44
Yes, I said to them that, 'Here we have a proper lineage. And I suggested you do it because it's quite different.'
2025-08-30 10:48
⏱ 05:00:33
In other words, there are some out there who continue to teach in your Raj heritance, let's call it. And ... I believe amongst them there were some Reiki teachers who had quite a lot of presence in the Reiki community, who were very successful. Yeah. You care to name them or ...? Well, one time, this is now a '99, Hiroshi Doi was giving a workshop for, I think it was only for teachers in Vancouver, in Canada. And I was ... I had planned at the time to visit old friends in Seattle, so I thought, since I'm very close, I might as well go there and see what he's teaching, what he has to do. I went there and joined the workshop and then at some point, somebody in the group said, 'Oh, please sensei, show us how to do an initiation.' And ... I think, if I remember correctly, all the participants were all teachers of different linages. And I saw him sitting there, he had his microphone and he went ... (mumbling in Japanese) It means, (mumble) 'That's a problem.' Something he mumbled, but I heard it. And I know to read the body language of Japanese people who don't want to do something. But the audience was all North Americans, they didn't know. Again, he was going, 'Arghhh.' And again, somebody else said, 'Yes, please.' And before you knew it, you had all the people cheering, 'Yes, yes, yes ... !' So he couldn't say, no. And then he showed some attunement process and I'm sitting there thinking, 'Oh my God, this is just what I learned from my brother.' So, Hiroshi Doi was one of your early students then? No, he was one of ... a student of ... one of my students' student. So I'm his grandfather. In that lineage! I understand. I don't know what he has done meanwhile, but I know some of the things he has done. Meanwhile, for example, he became a member of the Usui Association. Yes. And received reiju or initiation from them, but he was not a teacher in that. But he may have done other teacher trainings - I did too - with other people. So, he must be teaching something that's perfectly wonderful.
2025-08-30 11:55
⏱ 05:03:13
(Gossha) Thank you. I am sorry. Good. So it's not all what it seems to be. Certainly not. Sometimes there are personal mix-ups in between, things that maybe don't make sense to you, but just because you don't know the whole story.
2025-09-29 07:50
⏱ 05:03:30
Which aspect of it? It's my nature, you know, my nature is ... to be truthful.
2025-09-29 08:10
⏱ 05:03:35
As I said yesterday, I had no intention of becoming a famous Reiki person.
2025-09-29 08:08
⏱ 05:07:17
I just wanted to do people a favour and I thought with the publication of 'Reiki Fire' I'm doing them a favour, because suddenly now we know some things that can be documented about Usui sensei. We can set the history straight.
2025-09-29 08:12
⏱ 05:07:37
Your introduction with the Titanic was pretty funny, because I saw only the tip of the iceberg when that book came out. I didn't see what was coming underneath. And I was overwhelmed.
2025-08-30 16:55
⏱ 05:07:50
The first reaction I had was I called my publisher. I said, 'I've had enough! I'm not going to do another book or anything. I've had it. These people are all crazy. I quit.'
2025-09-29 08:14
⏱ 05:08:02
Yeah, I have a kind of exhibitionist nature. (laughter)
2025-09-29 08:15
⏱ 05:08:07
(laughter)
2025-09-29 08:08
⏱ 05:13:20
Either you say the truth, your truth - OK, your subjective truth - or you don't. There is nothing in between for me. I cannot say it a little bit. So, either you do or you don't do. I choose to do.
2025-09-29 08:16
⏱ 05:13:33
'Reiki Fire' triggered a lot of controversy.
2025-09-29 08:08
⏱ 05:21:41
Some of the objections were obvious pretences. I read them and blatantly, there were reactions defending their own positions. Very often, camouflaged under well sounding truisms or half-truths. And some even direct falsehoods. For which, actually, some of the authors even publicly had to apologize later.
2025-08-30 16:53
⏱ 05:22:06
What do you think made people react so strongly? And why did you retribute? Because some of your answers, published answers, were similarly polemic. Almost a ring of righteousness came with them. And sometimes even a little patronizing.
2025-08-30 16:52
⏱ 05:22:26
I don't really remember that much from then. It's a long time ago. And I guess I have changed. I've become ... I don't know, more relaxed or ... more centred in myself or so. Maybe I overreacted at times. Possible.
2025-08-30 16:51
⏱ 05:22:44
You know, I heard on a number of occasions, 'Well, Arjava has such an ego. I think that he published Reiki Fire really just to satisfy his ego.' And then you have those who continue to say, 'Well, he just wanted to make a lot of money and be famous. Ego!' So, the money aspect I'm happy to ignore at this point all together because that's quite ridiculous anyhow. But that other aspect deserves to be addressed. I don't care. I don't care one bit. Fame doesn't mean anything to me.
2025-08-30 16:49
⏱ 05:23:15
I said it already yesterday, the only thing that matters is the love in my heart. And even that is not mine.
2025-09-29 08:08
⏱ 05:35:13
I don't give a fuck. Really, I don't care. I don't care at all for fame. It ... is nothing to me. Nothing, nothing whatsoever.
2025-09-29 08:19
⏱ 05:35:22
Truly, honestly from the depths of my heart. Nothing. Zero.
2025-09-29 08:08
⏱ 05:48:40
The tone, I don't really understand why people got upset. Probably because, often I was making fun of them. And maybe that was not nice, but I was just making fun of them.
2025-08-30 16:49
⏱ 05:48:51
Actually, personally, I'm less concerned about people having their nose out of joint when somebody makes a mistake. However, I do keep you responsible if that kind of tenure then influences your students and your students go out and carry on the same ... maybe not so jokingly anymore, not so humorously anymore, but the same kind of almost disrespect. Then ... or ... So, and ... I don't hold the student primarily responsible. I hold always myself as a teacher and you as a teacher responsible. Yeah, I don't think my students are disrespectful. I mean, okay, maybe somebody is, but that is their own ... that's their own business, not? Their own karma. I always look at what about me, am I disrespectful? No, I love people. I don't have any problem with anybody, actually. Also with the people who attacked me or tried to make my work difficult I have no problem with anybody.
2025-08-30 16:48
⏱ 05:49:57
As I said, there was printed objection but there was a lot of other stuff happening. You were facing other criticisms. I cannot say it in any other way but ... You respectively your work was boycotted at times. When you wanted to release the book at a book fair, I believe. I believe the proper jargon in legalese is that you were confronted with an 'immediate enforceable injunction' at the time of your publication. I know that you mentioned Phyllis (Furumoto). I know that Phyllis was actually responsible; I didn't know that until very recently but she obviously knew it because part of her apology in the previous work I did is addressing the injustices she did towards you. But I would like the viewers actually to understand a little bit what happened to you.
2025-08-30 19:40
⏱ 05:50:56
Okay, okay I will, but maybe we go back to the first question. I've been thinking now as you were talking, thinking what is it that maybe made people ... mad. So, one of the things I know, one of my patterns is when I was a kid I always escaped when there was conflict. Always. When there was conflict I was just getting out of here thinking, 'I'm not playing this, this is stupid, I'm not that stupid, I don't need to fight, I'm beyond that.' Like that. And with the publication of the 'Reiki Fire' it was the first time in my life that I stood up for my truth. Maybe it came out too strong. Because it was a reaction to always escaping. Perhaps this is it, but I've also asked my wife many times because it's not an isolated incident in my life that people get upset with me. And I always ask her, 'What is it that makes people mad?' and she says to me, 'You irritate people!'
2025-08-30 19:38
⏱ 05:52:04
I want peace! I want peace, I want harmony, I want to have it all nice …
2025-09-29 08:53
⏱ 05:56:04
This is some kind of charisma. So okay, but still, what it is that pisses people off, that irritates them I really don't know. I can't say.
2025-09-29 08:53
⏱ 06:01:53
Many times I have thought that I've completely wasted my life with something that is ... useless because the people are not listening, they're not ready to listen, they don't want to hear, they like to have fairy tales and don't want to see what actually happened. ... People feel more comfortable with nice stories and all that. There are so many times I thought,
2025-09-29 08:56
⏱ 06:02:18
So when it came out, after three days ... In German. So the book came out in German. After three days, I got a fax from Phyllis. Not very nice. If you want to see it, I have it here. My publisher got one. Walter Lübeck, who wrote an introduction to the book, he got one. Kind of threatening me and the publisher to take it off the market unless you're prepared for legal stuff. And I'm looking at it and going like, 'What the hell? What is it?' Now we finally have something that we can work with. We have the memorial. We have found some people who are in Usui sensei's direct lineage. This is great, it's a great beginning!
2025-08-31 08:55
⏱ 06:03:08
One time when Phyllis was asked in person by a friend of mine what to do with my books, she said, 'Burn them.' That was in Germany. It didn't go down well because people had a bad reference to that. You can't believe the things that happened. They tried to buy the whole first edition of the 'Reiki Fire'. And then pressure the publisher into not publishing another one, but the publisher was not playing this game.
2025-08-31 08:54
⏱ 06:03:38
And then they went on like that. My Argentinian publisher, he had his windows broken.
2025-09-29 09:01
⏱ 06:07:58
Maybe the viewers today, they don't realize this was a time when the Reiki Alliance, or what one might call Western Reiki, because it wasn't just the Reiki Alliance, it was many more people, the Western Reiki was the dominant Reiki in the world. And of course, and I belonged also to that world, I still do. At that time, we were all ... not just 'indoctrinated', because I don't think anyone purposely consciously indoctrinated us, but we had a mind-set where we believed certain things, and clearly you started, we felt that your publication violated that.
2025-08-31 08:53
⏱ 06:08:40
And, my question really is, you came from a Western Reiki. You knew all that. And you must... The same. Absolutely the same. But I... I liked it when you said, 'Ah, we were... I was conditioned in a certain way and indoctrinated and ... you broke that.' Yes, I broke that and I would do it again every time. Thank you for that. You need somebody to shake you up when you're in that slumber, you know? And that happened to be me. It's not because I'm great. I just stumbled into that. I tried to escape so many times. I tried to... say, 'Okay, I'm getting out.'
2025-08-31 08:52
⏱ 06:09:22
I couldn't escape. It had me hooked. So it was an interesting, really an interesting situation. Suddenly I find myself in conflict on a personal level. It was something new for me not to back off, but to just stand up. And say, 'No, I'm not moving. I'm standing here. This is my truth. Now I'm standing here.' Okay, maybe some people found that egoistic. I don't know, I suppose. But for me it was maybe a childhood ... working through my childhood issues of not facing, never facing conflict and always escaping.
2025-08-31 08:50
⏱ 06:09:59
I think that the healing is very difficult, reconciliation is very difficult, if a victim doesn't accept the fact that in that(!) incident I was being victimized, there was injustice done to me, my father beat me or did worse. And healing very often includes that first step. In fact, I call this the 'heroism of the victim'.
2025-08-31 08:50
⏱ 06:10:23
So I felt of course that some injustice was done to me. I didn't stop with the 'Reiki Fire', I continued. It went on and on and on and on and on and on and on to the point where we had break-ins, where people's houses were vandalized, where all the books that I had written for people, autographed, were stolen out of the house. I mean, things where you think, 'That's not possible!' It's amazing! It's incredible. At some point we got threatening phone calls at home. My wife left the house when I was not home because she was afraid. It's incredible what happened.
2025-08-31 08:49
⏱ 06:11:05
So there were lots of strange things that happened. But what I really want to say is that I've had enough. I've had enough of the conflict. I had enough of the violence in different ways. I've had enough of feeling victimized. I've had enough of this constant friction. And I have no grudge to anybody. I just want to leave it behind. I'm ... When I say I've had enough it's like ... I'm not ... overwhelmed or so. It's more like I've had enough like when you ate a really good meal. (laughs) And you don't want to eat anymore. You know? That kind of enough. So I don't feel traumatized or anything by any of that. I came through all of this a better human being. More loving, more kind, more in my center, you know? And that's wonderful. I'm thankful and grateful for that. So whatever happened ... (gassho) ... thank you. It helped me a lot.
2025-08-31 08:48
⏱ 06:12:14
Reset the little button on the electronic gizmos that says, 'Reset to factory settings.' Then the factory setting is ... (points to his heart) Your attention is in your heart and you are ... (opens his hands) present and... that's all I want. Now.
2025-09-29 09:13
⏱ 06:12:34
I am also reminded of a situation when I was with Phyllis
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:12:59
And indeed you were right when I spoke to you the very first time. Apologies need to be addressed in person. I fully agree with you. And so did she. It was actually a dilemma she had.
2025-09-29 14:23
⏱ 06:13:09
The more important question, and I can’t remember which she asked first, was, ‚Is Arjava here?‘
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:16:19
And I said, 'No.' And she said, 'Oh, I'm very sorry. I wanted to meet him and have a direct conversation.' I know that the two of you never met. She then passed away.
2025-09-29 14:25
⏱ 06:16:29
But she did ... Her apology was clearly addressed to you. And from my point of view, it would be wonderful if you accepted that apology.
2025-08-31 15:20
⏱ 06:16:38
Yeah, nice. Okay, new beginning.
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:21:55
We can leave that behind now. I'd like to think that, yes. Yeah, nice. You know, there comes a point when ... it's just not relevant anymore.
2025-08-31 15:19
⏱ 06:22:05
No. It's okay. We learned the lessons and we're okay. Let it go now. Nice.
2025-08-31 15:18
⏱ 06:22:09
In the end, in the end, it all comes down to that. If two people have a conflict with one another, what should they do? Talk. Get together, talk.
2025-09-29 14:30
⏱ 06:22:17
And don't wait until it's really poisonous and fermented nicely, you know, and stinky and all that.
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:29:41
Don't carry it because then it becomes, as we can see in, in all of this, it becomes such a mess.
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:37:19
So the best is just to talk.
2025-09-29 14:14
⏱ 06:45:21
As I told you, my basic longing is for harmony deep inside. The confrontations that I cause ... I guess it's on the other side of the same spectrum. So one end you have the irritation. On the other you have the harmony. It's still the same thing.
2025-08-31 15:17
⏱ 06:45:47
For me, I said it earlier, Reiki is Reiki is Reiki. It doesn't have a label. There cannot be a Reiki that is better. There cannot be a Reiki that is inferior.
2025-08-31 15:17
⏱ 06:46:01
In Reiki, the Reiki person becomes that natural phenomenon to transfer the cosmic energy. And that cannot be by definition any different whether you do it or I do it or anybody else on earth does it. The race, the age, the gender, the whatever, it doesn't make any difference. No matter where you learned it, if you've learned it properly, okay, then it's always the same. For me, it's like that. So I have great respect ... for Reiki. Not for one special kind of ... type of Rei ... For me there is no 'type' of Reiki. Reiki is Reiki is Reiki.
2025-08-31 15:16
⏱ 06:46:49
So the door that had opened to the traditional Reiki closed as easily as it had opened. And then I found myself thinking, 'Okay, what now? I don't have that connection anymore. I know that I would really like to learn traditional Reiki.' Because of my ... not because it's better, but because of my personal life. I've been around Japanese people from when I was 18. Close to them. In love with them. So it's for me, it suits me. It really suits me.
2025-09-01 07:44
⏱ 06:47:36
So I got her phone number from Doi sensei. And I went there ... Um! ... I called ... We called her - not I - we called her soon after that. First carefully. Chetna on the phone saying, 'Oh, I read the book.' Yeah, doing the Tai Chi, the Japanese telephone Tai Chi. So she said, 'Oh, I read your book and me and my husband would like to do training with you if you ... Do you train people? What is your schedule?' ... and ... and ... (mimicking conversation) 'By the way my husband is a ... Foreigner!' (laughter) I was listening on the speaker phone thinking like, 'Oh, now the door (slam sound)! I will eat ...' The Greeks say: you will eat the door. In the face. But no! Tadao sensei was on the phone and he said, 'Well does he speak Japanese?' Chetna said, 'Yes, he speaks Japanese.' He said, 'So? What's the problem? Come.'
2025-09-01 07:44
⏱ 06:48:37
An astonishing Reiki constellation with Bert Hellinger reveals Usui's peace and Arjava's link to Hayashi. This shifts Arjava's mission and foretells his destiny even before meeting Chiyoko Yamaguchi.
B-Roll material!
Start MF with (excerpts of) this video?
2025-09-01 07:56
⏱ 06:48:37
She was born in 1921, so she was 79. She'd been doing Reiki from age 17. So how many is that? 62 years of practice.
2025-09-29 14:50
⏱ 06:48:51
'What happens to somebody who has been doing a lot of Reiki practice for many years? What happens to them?
2025-09-29 14:49
⏱ 06:52:36
I found a different humility and humbleness. It was so beautiful. But simple. Super simple, not spectacular.
2025-09-29 14:49
⏱ 06:56:56
And that I saw and that I loved. And when, after the first five-day training, I looked at her, I remember, I said to her, 'You know, I'm very glad to have met a Reiki adult.'
2025-09-29 14:52
⏱ 06:57:09
Beautiful. And it was so easy to learn in her ... in her presence.
2025-09-29 14:49
⏱ 07:04:18
To me, to my understanding, the teaching never was her focus. The focus was always on the treatments.
2025-09-29 14:58
⏱ 07:04:30
This was in, in 2000 in July, June or July, I did the first training with her and she had told me that, 'You can learn only Shoden and Okuden, Reiki 1 and Reiki 2.' I was totally comfortable with that because I was thrilled that they would accept me as a student in a traditional school. I was like, 'Yeah, this is what I want.' Nice. I didn't think about becoming a teacher of Jikiden Reiki or anything like that. The thought didn't occur at all. I just wanted to learn the traditional style. And I loved it.
2025-09-02 06:40
⏱ 07:05:13
'You know, if you work hard, you can do the first part of the teacher's training. It's called shihankaku. Next year, in one year. But you must promise me to work hard.' I said, 'I promise.' I was blown away. Then I asked her, so now we're in 2001, 'How many people have you taught the teacher's level in 2001?' And she said, 'None.'
2025-09-29 15:01
⏱ 07:05:38
My impression was that ... your appearance opened for the Yamaguchis their vision to the possibility that there is a huge audience out there in the world. I communicated that to them. I don't know if it had that impact, like you say, but I communicated that to them and I said to ... the first time when I met Chiyoko Sensei,
2025-09-02 06:39
⏱ 07:06:03
In fact, one of the questions further down in my catalogue was: Tadao has a successor, his son. He's already nominated. You... Has he? I don't know. Is that not right? It's a suspicion that is around, but I don't think anything has been publicly declared. My bad! I' had listened to the rumours, so to speak, and taken that for granted, which would not be that unusual for that matter. No, it would be normal. It would be the normal course of events. I would expect that. Particularly if we are thinking of an institute, of an organisation, of an enterprise, which is being handed down over generations, yes, I agree. If we are thinking of a spiritual leader, or something like that, then it's a different matter. But that's a rabbit hole I don't intend to go down. No, better not. But the question I had actually is: okay, if Tadao has a successor, you were the Vice President of the... Who is your successor? And the question of the Source and the succession of the Source is a relevant question for the well-being of actually the organisation. Or, to put it in other words, if that is not tended to carefully and in a nourishing kind of way, the writing is on the wall that the organisation is going to find itself in some dire straits. Yes, I don't know. You know, basically Japanese people are not very transparent. You may have noticed that. So, there are many things I don't know. Even though I seem to be close. But there are many things I don't know. Many things are not talked about. They are not up for discussion.
2025-09-29 15:30
⏱ 07:08:00
I asked about ownership of Jikiden, succession and if it was a snow-ball system? All very juicy questions and some exclusive answers. And continued in A37. And money is being addressed – also as an author. also in A38 … Eye catching topics but not directly related to the MF. PROMO material?
2025-09-02 07:03
⏱ 07:08:00
'There isn't all that much difference in terms of teaching. An interesting observation.' ... in fact and listening to you when you described the different levels, listening to you I had to smile inwardly, because... the Western Reiki, outside of the Reiki Alliance teaching, included a lot of similar elements. Even the structuring, even the Reiki 1 and 2, as we would call it, being combined, all that exists in teachings of Barbara Weber Ray's, and coming down. And my wife and I are beneficiaries amongst the teaching also coming from other Western sources. We know all that. So I was actually smiling. There isn't all that much difference from my perspective in terms of teaching. So that was an interesting observation. It's all the same. It's all the same. We know that Mitsui sensei, whom we talked about earlier, who went to teach in Japan in the mid-80s, '84, '85, like that, she ... We found a magazine called 'The Twilight Zone', it was a ... I don't know if it was such a good title for a spiritual magazine. It seemed so at the time. It seems a bit dark now. There was an article in it, in the '84, 1984 edition. I have copies of that at home where Mitsui sensei met with Ogawa sensei. So the one that I thought I had discovered 10 years later, but he was already known. So Mrs. Mitsui had met him 10 years before me. She just never talked about it in public and I did. That's the only difference. So I was not the one who discovered Usui Reiki Ryoho Gakkai. That was Mitsui sensei. Actually it wasn't only her, but we know that Takata sensei was in touch with the Hayashi Reiki Institute until the mid-50s. We know that. So, I was by no means the first one who came across it. I was just the first who talked about it. That was all.
2025-09-02 07:39
⏱ 07:10:25
So, as far as that is concerned, I could die now and in my last moment think, 'Thank you.' I've done something good with my life. I can go easily. But I'm not planning that.
2025-09-29 17:30
⏱ 07:10:37
And you do it for yourself. Do it out of the love you have for the subject at hand. And then it's beautiful. Love speaks. Love speaks.
2025-09-29 17:31
⏱ 07:10:46
The question was, why is he now writing so much poetry and things which aren't directly related to Reiki? So, that's one of the questions. Sorry, don't shoot the bearer of the news. I'm just putting it to you. You can never do it right, you know? When you write about Reiki, the people complain. And when you do something else, they complain.
2025-09-02 08:12
⏱ 07:11:08
Really, just between us. I spent so much time with Osho, with meditation. And he destroyed my ego. I don't say I don't have one. I'm not saying that. But he destroyed it in the sense that I'm aware when it is speaking. I know when it's speaking. And then I'm there, I'm present. So, it can't fool me like that.
2025-09-29 17:38
⏱ 07:11:28
And Chiyoko sensei used to say in their dialect in Ishikawa, where she was from, they didn't use to say, 'I give you Reiki or I do Reiki, but I switch on the Reiki.' Like the light. She always said, this is like a light switch and the way it goes is on-off, like that. It doesn't really matter where you turn the light on. Whether you use this switch or this switch or that or this. You put your hand on it and boom! So, self-treatments obviously are important. But: essentially, Reiki is compassion in action, is for you to share your blessings with others. That's the traditional way of looking at it. It is not for you. Now, why is it not for you? Because in the Buddhist way of looking at things, there is no separate self. It is an illusion. And why should we encourage and strengthen that thing that doesn't exist? The 'me! me! me! me! me! me!' This has to go! It must go. You must destroy it. You must demolish that completely. That egocentric thinking. Don't support it. Cut it. So, the illusion really is which has to go? The illusion of separateness? The illusion has to go. You have to wake up from that dream. You wake up by not supporting it. By not taking more sleeping pills. But wake up, shake up! It's refreshing listening to you even to the point that Mrs. Yamaguchi was saying 'on-off', as you just demonstrated. Of course, Hawayo Takata exactly used the same physical explanation and illustration and even the same words 'on-off'. She used the same words, I heard from some of her students. I don't remember who it was. They said to me, 'Oh, Takata used to say the same thing.' Yeah, yeah. Exactly. But they had the same teacher, what do you expect? And I think we're well advised to bear that in our awareness that, like you keep on emphasizing, at the end of the day there is one source and there may be different ways of interpreting, presenting, teaching it, translating it into practices. But at the end of the day, we are doing the same thing.
2025-09-02 14:18
⏱ 07:13:52
Reiki is not a technique. Reiki is just put your hand on it, finish. End of story.
2025-09-29 17:48
⏱ 07:13:57
There is nothing better. How can your Reiki be better than mine? In the beginning in Germany or in the West when Reiki was spreading all over the world, there were some rifts between different Reiki schools and the direct Takata lineage to the Reiki Alliance. They had some kind of arrogance thinking we are the best and the others are no good. And ...(groaning) I didn't like that. I was having this allergic reaction every time I felt this arrogance of people thinking ... 'My Reiki is better than yours.'
2025-09-29 17:51
⏱ 07:14:36
So. Many times in Jikiden Reiki congresses I've talked about this issue because I know that even in our own association people start to do the same thing. They start to say, 'Ah, we are doing traditional Reiki and you are just doing Western Reiki and ours is better.' That's really against my deep understanding and knowing. Because this, I can only say it again, what comes out of here is absolutely pure, unpolluted and unpollutable life force and it will be that from any Reiki practitioner. And if you ask me what is the right way to practice Reiki, I would say, 'The way that you do it is the right way.' That's it. For everybody.
2025-09-02 14:13
⏱ 07:15:25
This for me was fantastic. This is what I wanted.
2025-09-29 17:56
⏱ 07:18:02
And I learned that from her, how to do traditional style treatments.
2025-09-29 17:56
⏱ 07:20:49
I imported the Western Reiki into Japan and then I exported the traditional.
2025-09-02 16:26
⏱ 07:28:35
So that seems to be my role. And my role was also to fuse or be the bridge between East and West. I've tried it in my life in so many different ways. In my personal life I failed to fuse East and West. I was hoping the relationship would last forever. It didn't. And now I'm wondering if I, in my professional world, I also failed fusing East and West because it's complicated. It's very complicated. Maybe the two, after all, don't mix. Who said that?
2025-09-02 16:28
⏱ 07:29:17
Because for the last few years, the last many years actually, the last 15 years, I've often found myself sitting between two chairs. And that's an uncomfortable place to be. So I understand the Japanese culture, I understand the Western culture, and I'm trying to bring them, help them be together. Mediating between the East and West, it's very difficult. It's very, very, very difficult.
2025-09-02 16:28
⏱ 07:29:50
I feel it takes courage to be an optimist. I see you nod. Please, please let me have your thoughts. I feel the same. So, for me, the basic ... What do we call it in German? I'm not sure. I'm Swiss. How do we call it in Swiss-German then? The basic trust in the benevolence of existence. I have that. I've had that since I was a child.
2025-09-03 07:54
⏱ 07:30:15
So, in this way, I totally agree with what you say. I'm optimistic.
2025-09-29 19:01
⏱ 07:32:30
I look forward to things unfolding in a new way. So, this is all good. But what I got tired of in the last 15 years is that somehow, really, like I said, sitting in between two chairs. It's just not comfortable. With one cheek on one side and one cheek on the other.
2025-09-03 07:53
⏱ 07:32:55
So, Japanese culture is very different from our Western culture. I had said earlier that I really like the traditional teaching because of my personal history. Because I spent so much time in the East with a Japanese partner or in the past with Japanese partners. Then I have this many years of meditative practice with Osho, which is also Eastern. So, I feel very comfortable with that. I don't think it's better than what we have in the West. It's different. I've been trying to help Western people understand the Japanese way and trying to help Japanese people to understand the Western way. So, that was my position to make sure or at least to have the intention that these people, the two, can communicate more effectively together. And that has turned out to be very, very difficult. Because they just don't understand each other and I'm sitting in between. And the consequence of this realization has led to your resignation? Yes. I can't do it anymore.
2025-09-03 07:53
⏱ 07:34:14
Yeah, yeah. I can't do it anymore. I don't want to fight anymore. I don't want to have to make an effort all the time to bring people together and to ...
2025-09-29 19:04
⏱ 07:34:24
help people understand each other. I'm tired of it.
2025-09-29 19:05
⏱ 07:34:27
We'll see.
2025-09-29 19:01
⏱ 07:41:38
You have in your personal life experienced when this merger or this fusion between East and West didn't work out, that the aftermath had also created some pain. Probably on both sides, it's probably fair to say as it most of the time does when two people separate and so on. Yeah. How optimistic, if that's the right term, are you with respect to this particular separation? Very optimistic. Because I know that pain is a great revealer of truth. So even if pain happens, I welcome it. Whatever it takes, we are here to learn. We are here to ... We said it earlier, if we had learned our lessons, we wouldn't be here. So we are here to learn. And maybe we can learn as much as possible. So next time when we reincarnate here would be a little bit less.
2025-09-03 07:51
⏱ 07:42:35
No. Me? Of course, any time, especially if I can meet my wife again. Me, I know many people say, 'Oh, this is my last life or it would be nice to be ...' I don't want to finish this. This is so much fun.
2025-09-29 19:06
⏱ 07:42:49
I'll be right ... like Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know? 'I'll be back.' I'm in no rush. Not at all. I love it here. I really enjoy it. Okay, all the struggles and ... It's never boring. It's always ... We always have some project, some fun, some excitement, something changing. Nothing is ever boring.
2025-09-03 07:50
⏱ 07:43:10
I'm not really stuck in the thinking something is right or wrong. I don't think there is any such thing right or wrong. If you have energy to do something, 'Good, go ahead and do it!'
2025-09-29 19:45
⏱ 07:43:22
Though in this video it's origin (2017) is described and the healing of the rift between men and women is addressed, there seems little material for the MF.
2025-09-03 08:08
⏱ 07:43:22
It's really ... it's a tricky question, because we have in our history Takata sensei, who was really responsible for saving Reiki after World War II. If she hadn't been there, we wouldn't know about it, none of us. We wouldn't be sitting here. We wouldn't be sitting here. That's clear. So, she saved it. Thank God, she did. But then when she ... When she passed, somebody had to take over. It happened to be her granddaughter, kind of natural, daughter, granddaughter, son, husband. So, it happened that way. So, the ... ... business ... the teaching, the business got mixed into a family business. And that's always tricky. With Jikiden Reiki, obviously it's the same, because it's a family. So, this will be a challenge for those who continue with that, to decide which way they want to go. Do they want to be a family business? Do they want to be something else? It's very, very tricky. It has to be considered cautiously. So I don't know what they are going to do.
2025-09-03 08:35
⏱ 07:44:37
I'm not really concerned either. And I have no idea what I'm going to do. And I'm not really concerned with that either.
2025-09-29 19:52
⏱ 07:44:45
We would see. So I can't really say anything about that. But I see your point. And this is something that Usui sensei, in his Kokai Denju, or the public teaching declaration, he addresses. So, from the very beginning of Reiki, that thing is there. That dynamic is there. And he said that, 'Okay, it's been a habit in the past that somebody who has received a spiritual secret as a present from the universe is then using that for the well-being of the financial well-being of their family and I'm breaking with that tradition now. And I do a different thing.' And the natural ... 'natural' human way to deal with this kind of thing is exactly the opposite of what he talked about. Of course. Yeah? So if you have a bakery, of course you're going to inherit it to one of your kids. But when you mix family business and spirituality, it's tricky. That's where it becomes very tricky. Very tricky! How you deal with that? And it takes, I think, great emotional intelligence to deal with that properly.
2025-09-03 08:34
⏱ 07:46:02
So, I hope and I trust that whoever is involved there will find a good way to do this. And in Jikiden Reiki the same, I hope and I trust that they will find a good way to deal with it. And it's in transition. You know, the same is true for the O-G-M. There is a transition with Johannes Reindl. Everybody is expecting, hoping that there is a transformation, a continuation which benefits us all. Like I mentioned, there is a great opening which I'm very joyful about, where he accepts basically every style and he is open to everyone. And from what I hear happening with you and Jikiden Reiki, there is a possibility of transformation happening. So let's see how that continues. Yeah, we see how it goes. I have no idea. I don't know. I can only wish for everyone to untangle this because it's not easy to deal with. So for example, the people who followed Takata sensei, they were taught certain things that were not correct. Takata sensei changed - maybe for safety reasons for her own physical ... Survival. ... safety, survival. And in that respect that was good. But then somebody comes who questions all of that. Me. Of course they get upset. I understand that. I would have been upset if I was in their position. So when you mix the family business and the teaching, there are loyalties, very... Complex. It's very complex.
2025-09-03 08:33
⏱ 07:47:50
One of the things that often leads to conflict in something like Reiki, in an association or in a group of people, is when the founding fathers are not seen. We don't have that problem. We have them. They are always here with us. Usui sensei. Hayashi sensei - always present, being filmed with us. So I don't think there's a problem really. It's just really ego stuff. That ego stuff we are going to have to look at and solve. We cannot give the responsibility to somewhere in the past. We are making that. We are creating that. And we therefore can also mend it again. Can solve it. Exactly!
2025-09-03 08:31
⏱ 07:48:43
This is a very educative video! As such it may be great promo material for the archive videos. It does not contain highlights for the MF.
2025-09-04 14:49
⏱ 07:48:43
and I had the intention to say, well, isn't this great? There is so much less difference between the Eastern and the Western tradition than many of us think. Because even in the Western tradition, the concept which you just described is alive. And there are even Takata Masters who never got initiated into the third level with the same background. And, you know, even of the very few who are still alive, there are some amongst us who did not get the Masters initiation. Later on in the development, particularly in the branch, in Usui Shiki Ryoho, with or without the OGM - my history and practice is without - but in Usui Shiki Ryoho, the Master symbol attained a present and a cherished value, which is part of my tradition and suits me very well. I'm not against it. It's beautiful. I know where it comes from.
2025-09-04 16:11
⏱ 07:49:55
So, these three. Each one is represented by a Sanskrit seed syllable. Sanskrit seed syllable. A seed syllable is a syllable that has the ability to give birth to a Buddha. And when you put these three together, love, light and power, the ultimate principle is what they call in Kurama 'Sonten', which is the same as the Master symbol in Reiki. So, it's a very, very beautiful concept. I have no problem with that at all. Only thing is, in the Usui Association, in Jikiden Reiki, it's not being used and in the Takata schools, it is used. If you were somebody insecure wondering, 'What do I do? I read in your book, there is no Master symbol. What am I going to do now?' I would tell them, 'You just keep using it the way you learn to use it.'
2025-09-04 15:47
⏱ 07:50:52
And what is wrong with it? Nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong. It's beautiful.
2025-09-29 20:28
⏱ 07:50:56
... So liberating. Also what you just said, that 'If that is your practice, René, and if you cherish it, by all means, keep on doing that.' What is wrong with that? It's beautiful. The concept is so beautiful.
2025-09-04 15:46
⏱ 07:51:10
If you feel comfortable with what you do, you practice that.
2025-09-29 20:27
⏱ 07:59:50
If you don't feel comfortable with what you do, look into your heart and find out what it is that is lacking, or where you feel uncomfortable, what is it, and then fix that. So, you can forget about all the philosophical nonsense and everything and just do your Reiki. Just put your hands on your clients. That's the important thing. The differences are really insubstantial.
2025-09-04 15:43
⏱ 08:00:17
So, for me, Reiki is like football. And ... if we want to play football together, we need to have different teams. You cannot play with yourself. You need different teams. And if we want to have events, and if we want to have lots of fun, then we do championships. It's not about one being better than the other or beating, but to play together, we need many different players and many different teams. Reiki is the same. We need many different players and many different teams. And all they do is they play football. And let's not forget that. They do Reiki. Let's really not forget that.
2025-09-29 20:34
⏱ 08:00:55
That he was a ... 'he' ... that symptom was able to push people into camps ... fighting each other tooth and nail. Quite incredible. And then I noticed that was going on everywhere in all aspects of society. Then came Corona. You had people breaking up their partnerships, their families, because 'I am for ... You are against ...'. And I am sitting there and I am thinking, 'How is it possible that we allow to be pushed apart like that, when really we are all sitting in the same boat? How is it possible? How dumb are we to allow that?
2025-09-05 07:38
⏱ 08:01:43
But we have to recognize that it is symptomatic for a development which, apparently, society needs. And in that sense, like earlier on you said, crisis and illnesses can also be a blessing in disguise. Otherwise it doesn't come up. Otherwise it wouldn't happen. Obvious! We need that and there's something we have a chance to look at. And it's important to look at it because if we look at it, we can do something about it.
2025-09-05 07:37
⏱ 08:02:09
Fear ... fear is obviously one of the factors which plays a role in this, in this splitting, in this, 'I'm right, you're wrong.'
2025-10-01 21:58
⏱ 08:08:32
Everywhere is the same! Do you have an answer? No. No, I don't. Do you have a remedy? Yeah. Sit. Meditate. Understand yourself.
2025-10-01 22:01
⏱ 08:08:42
When you understand yourself or really when you understand the non-existence of yourself, then that stops. Then there is no enemy. What kind of enemy are we talking about? Another human, an enemy? Are you kidding me?
2025-09-05 07:36
⏱ 08:08:56
If you had the chance to look at the universe from - I don't know what to call it, I don't know enough - from another universe or another .... galaxy or from another realm or something, what do you see? You see one beautiful, beautiful immensity. But how could you think of that as not being one?
2025-09-05 07:36
⏱ 08:09:20
between every particle or wavelength. So what you just described and you made an effort of saying is not just a spiritual concept, It's actually a matter of fact and a description of law. That's a very scientific way of looking at life. It's just what it is. It's not a philosophy to me. It's just ... it's obvious. Good.
2025-09-05 07:35
⏱ 08:09:42
I had really, truly the desire to bring the people together from the beginning. That's why I'm so surprised when I hear that people are saying, 'Oh, troublemaking, you want to make money, you want to be rich, you want to be ...' I'm like, 'Huh!?' Zero! And I was so concerned that I'm intending to bring the people together and instead they're falling ... they're growing apart more. This is really the opposite of what I wanted. When I said to him, 'Can we take a look? I want to see the dynamic.'
2025-09-05 07:34
⏱ 08:10:16
And I think one of the problems that we have in the international Reiki family is because of that. It's actually money.
2025-09-05 07:32
⏱ 08:22:35
I'm not saying you shouldn't charge for your teaching. If I wouldn't charge for my teaching, I would be very, very skinny. I live from it. I have to charge. But there is something about ...
2025-10-01 22:03
⏱ 08:22:49
So the thing is to learn to access the collective wisdom. High art! A high art. Which is our wisdom. It's not mine. People who are able to access that common wisdom, they seem to other people charismatic.
2025-10-01 22:06
⏱ 08:23:11
But that's a nice way to start today by coming to recognize the potential in each of us. The viewers as well as ourselves individually. The potential to tap into that wisdom as you call it. This is one side. The other side is when you tap into that collective source, you are more yourself. But everybody has that potential. And anyone who has had a deeper experience of the sense of who they are, they immediately realize that we're all the same. That means there's nobody better. There's nobody ... So that illusion of separateness, of ... That illusion evaporates. It evaporates. Finish!
2025-09-05 08:05
⏱ 08:24:00
This morning when I sort of mentally ... and also was doing my self-treat ... and prepared myself for our conversation, a Swiss Jesuit priest, Pater Brantschen, came to my mind. He is a person who has been significant in my life, even though I've never met him personally, but ... I would come to Switzerland and drive through the Alps, switch on the radio pondering some important philosophical or spiritual question. I would switch on the radio and there he was, giving me the answer. Or I went to my mother's house one evening, and he was in a TV show. It was very funny actually, because the topic of that discussion, very serious, there were neurologists there and all kinds of serious academics. The question was, 'Is there a life after death?' There were also one or two people there who had near-death experiences, and they shared their experiences. And this guy was sitting next to the moderator, this priest. He's also - and that's maybe why I thought today of him, because he has lived in Japan for a long time - he's a Zen master and the Jesuit priest. And actually he has a meditation centre , where he was the founder of a meditation centre here in Switzerland, a very important one. In this TV show, he hardly said anything and I suspect the moderator felt a little guilty, So, right at the end he turned to him and basically asked him, 'Look, you're Christian and they have the concept of hell. Would you like to say anything?' And this guy sat there for the longest time thinking, like you sometimes. Just taking your time to let people suffer in their own juices. (whispering:) Let them ferment. On TV that was quite something. And then he sort of looked into the camera and said, 'I don't know whether there is a hell, but one thing I'm sure of: There's nobody in it.' He said - and this is why I'm mentioning him - he said that ... in one of the talks he was casual and he said, 'If you slap a Caucasian, a European in the face, his tears will be salty. That's true also if in Africa you slap an African, or if you slap a Japanese in Japan. And if you cut them, the blood will be red.' When you just spoke about the illusion of separateness and that in the essence, we are more united than maybe sometimes in daily life our surfaces lead us to believe, that reminded me of Pater Brantschen. And to me that is always an inspiration when I talk about cultural differences, which of course exist - and of course you're a different personality to me - but if we're going a little bit deeper and allow the possibility that separation is pretty much an illusion, we quickly come to that state which Pater Brantschen was describing. Everybody's the same. Beautiful, really beautiful, so simple, and yet so difficult to implement in your daily life.
2025-09-05 08:03
⏱ 08:27:13
Because we are driven by desire, we are driven by our dreams, by our lust for power, for domination, for all that. It's incredible. And our insecurities.
2025-10-01 22:08
⏱ 08:27:25
After seeing that constellation, I relaxed because for you guys that haven't seen the constellation, in the beginning of that, Usui sensei just looks around and he's very intrigued by the nature outside of the venue. Then very quickly he just leaves and he says, 'I'm finished with all the stuff behind me.' And he goes out. So when I saw that, something really relaxed in me. And I realized that, 'Okay, here I don't have to do anything for him, he is complete in himself. He doesn't need me to fix something.'
2025-09-05 08:38
⏱ 08:28:09
I was just thinking, how do you feel today when you reflect ... you saw this relatively young man turning in a circle looking for his mission or for his calling, for his purpose. And the day before yesterday you told me you resigned from your position, so in a way there's the reset thing. So, looking back, have you fulfilled your mission, do you think?
2025-09-05 08:38
⏱ 08:28:36
I don't think you can ever not fulfil your mission.
2025-10-01 22:12
⏱ 08:32:25
Perhaps. But it is what it is. You do what you can, you do your best. And sometimes that best is good, and sometimes it's not good enough.
2025-10-01 22:14
⏱ 08:32:34
So. That's it. So, in that way, I think of course I did what I could. And I gave my best.
2025-09-05 08:34
⏱ 08:36:53
When I'm here, I give myself as fully as I can. I have no other agenda. I'm here for you and the project and the cameras.
2025-10-01 22:15
⏱ 08:37:03
And I know that sometimes it's just not good enough. And I accept that.
2025-10-01 22:12
⏱ 08:43:15
because when I spoke to Phyllis, she almost used the same words as you just did. And she said ... She was talking about doing the best, failing sometimes, making mistakes. And that was actually her prelude to the apology. And one of the questions which came to us, actually, when I spoke also to Thassos, was the question: What would you today say to Phyllis? If you had to meet her today, what would you tell her, if she had to walk through the door? I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know, it's really hypothetical. So I have no idea what I would do. Something, I'm sure I would do something. Who knows, probably I would just go and give her a hug and say, 'Okay, let's leave all this behind and start new.' But I really don't know, because honestly I don't know.
2025-09-05 08:37
⏱ 08:44:18
The funniest situations when you yourself have to laugh because you didn't expect it. I like that. I enjoy it.
2025-10-01 22:17
⏱ 08:44:26
Absolutely, but what you have to do is you have to reflect. So don't take just any kind of rule that is imposed on you by someone, maybe by your culture, or by the way that your teacher thought, or their teacher thought, or by something. Always question!
2025-09-05 08:49
⏱ 08:44:44
Look inside. Now, when I'm told not to do this or not to do that, I check with myself.
2025-10-01 22:10
⏱ 08:52:53
He said, 'For you it's important to always filter everything you hear from other people through the wisdom of your own heart.' And when that suits you, when that is on the same wavelength as your being, then okay. Otherwise ... out the window.
2025-10-01 22:43
⏱ 08:53:14
This video may have little direct relevance to the MF - other than the highlighted 'nugget' (on 7:48) - but it contains educative material which is good for promo for the archive videos.
2025-09-05 08:52
⏱ 08:53:14
I'm not here to say what you should or what you shouldn't do. For me, it's always about when I'm confronted with a rule or a ... ... rule ... a standardization or rule, I ask myself, 'How does that sit with me? Does it suit me?'
2025-10-01 23:00
⏱ 08:53:31
Something that I would never touch, that is sacred to me! That I would never change. I would not change one bit of that. I want it like that. I don't want it any other way. I just love people.
2025-10-01 23:02
⏱ 08:53:42
My heart is there.
2025-10-01 22:59
⏱ 08:59:54
I admire your very strict consequence of following your heart even at dire cost. Like you just described. Especially then! Of course, that's when the chips are down. That's, that's when you have to do it!
2025-10-01 23:04
⏱ 09:00:07
highly educative and great promo for archieve. Other than 'we agree to disagree' there is nothing of direct relevance for the MF.
2025-09-05 09:03
⏱ 09:00:07
The prison begins in the moment that you think that you are in it.
2025-09-06 10:33
⏱ 09:01:30
But if you're not in it, you're free.
2025-10-02 08:00
⏱ 09:03:00
I'm completely free.
2025-10-02 08:00
⏱ 09:05:19
I am free as the wind. Beautiful. I love that.
2025-10-02 08:00
⏱ 09:07:53
They never ... They too, never come back in that same way. They are unique. As you are, you are absolutely unique. This alone is an incredible statement: You are unique! Wow! Each of us. Celebrate that. Wow.
2025-10-02 08:08
⏱ 09:08:09
So, the past trauma and the past pleasure and the past in between those two, it makes us do what we do now.
2025-10-02 08:00
⏱ 09:18:10
The free will happens when the mind - and mind in Japanese philosophies is these two: heart-mind - when the heart-mind is in the present, the 'nen.' That's important! It's not just the intellectual mind. No, it's both. We think, feel, and that happens from here. When you can manage to arrest the mind, so the mental and emotional processes, and we can arrest them in the present moment, then you're good.
2025-10-02 08:09
⏱ 09:18:47
Very learnative material - good Archive promo! But other than the one gold nugget (01:22) there are no highlights, nothing direct for the MF.
2025-09-06 10:36
⏱ 09:18:47
Okay, we are not concerned what other people do or think.
2025-10-02 13:07
⏱ 09:26:02
Let them do what they want to do. I'm not concerned with the unethical or different behaviour of other people. What I am concerned with is with my unethical behaviour.
2025-10-02 13:08
⏱ 09:26:16
Good educational stuff for PROMO and a 'hot' topic but no highlights for the MF.
2025-09-06 13:56
⏱ 09:26:16
Also, many people like to have a leader, a captain of a ship, who leads and takes decision. Which is understandable, too.
2025-10-02 13:18
⏱ 09:26:26
It doesn't really matter whether the hands are like this or like this or like this or like this, doesn't matter at all. It's all the same once the light goes on, the light goes on.
2025-10-02 13:20
⏱ 09:26:36
One thing that I've noticed in my spiritual adventures ... I have met many spiritual teachers. I spent many years with one of them, with Osho. I noticed that while the master is there, there are very few rules and the standardization really begins after the master is gone. To somehow ... because the master keeps the, the 'master' keeps the attention, keeps the attention in the space by her or his presence. When they are gone, we substitute that by rules.
2025-09-06 14:24
⏱ 09:27:19
So we need to have some kind of standards, but as little as possible. To leave a lot of space for freedom. So for me, rules are rules or standards are ...
2025-09-06 14:18
⏱ 09:27:32
That also created a lot of friction then with, as I said, with Jikiden youngsters coming out saying, 'We have the very original way of teaching,' Which is of course a contradiction because it was ... 'standardized' may be the wrong word, but it was put in a certain form. How can we ... What can you and I contribute, that these developments where standardization is evolving into a burden, a liability and it doesn't surface anymore?
2025-09-06 14:18
⏱ 09:28:07
The point is: Reiki is the way of .... not 'to' but 'of' enlightenment. Not 'to' enlightenment! So let's go back to that and work on that. That's important. That's the only important thing.
2025-10-02 13:22
⏱ 09:28:25
[laughs] Okay, I'm not really ... someone who likes associations much. Sounds funny from somebody like me. Who was the vice president of an association? It's not really my thing, but I know that it's necessary. And I know that it's good for people, and I know that people want to be part of something,
2025-10-04 13:23
⏱ 09:28:48
I don't have a political mind. I can't. I can't do it.
2025-10-04 13:20
⏱ 09:31:31
My question was also going a little bit in the direction of what would you say if your students, your Jikiden students came to you and said, 'I want to be a member of an inclusive organization and share my knowledge with other members of that association who come from other Reiki learnings and traditions, and be collaborative with them?' I always encourage people to do it, even though I didn't want to do it, because it doesn't suit me. So, I always encourage them. And you know, in ProReiki, for example, a lot of the people who were involved in that were my students and people who were close to me. I always encourage them. I think the idea is good. It's just a personal thing that I'm not good at political organizations.
2025-09-06 15:10
⏱ 09:32:31
I just... It's not my style. I feel uncomfortable.
2025-10-04 13:20
⏱ 09:36:32
We have all our churches, our religions that began with some charismatic leader, somebody who had transcendental wisdom, beautiful teaching. And no matter where you go, whether you go to Islam, or to Hinduism, or to Buddhism, or to Christianity, or to ... Judaism, wherever you go, it's all beautiful. When you really go into it deeply, all of it is just fantastic. But then with time, only the bones remain and the real inside, the heart of it just starts to disappear. It's always a danger when the organization becomes more important than the thing that is being organized. How do you avoid that? I have no idea. I really don't know.
2025-10-04 13:29
⏱ 09:37:26
I'm not my position or something. I'm a person. I'm a human person and for me, all Reiki is good.
2025-10-04 13:30
⏱ 09:37:33
I really don't care for labels, not at all. And for me, inclusion is not something that we need to strive to, but it is something natural, because I know that everything is connected to me. I don't have to make an extra effort. I know this whole thing is all one. Very beautiful statement.
2025-10-04 13:31
⏱ 09:38:00
In the 25 years that I've been with them. Me, that I've been involved in Reiki since 92 .... So how many 33 years? 33 is a good number.
2025-10-04 13:43
⏱ 09:43:28
Canon, the number of Canon, 33 words. So I've been involved in Reiki for 33 years. I've had a lot of conflict as we discussed a little bit about. I have not had a single court case and I'm not planning on ever having one. It doesn't interest me. It doesn't interest me.
2025-10-04 13:46
⏱ 09:43:47
Juicy, roumour mill stuff maybe for promo but no MF relevance (except repitition of the past, i.e. Phyllis' trademark efforts).
2025-09-06 17:02
⏱ 09:43:47
I wonder whether you know the people on the picture.
2025-10-04 13:47
⏱ 09:44:23
Some of them I know, yes, of course. Some of them. The only one that I've met is of course, Doi sensei. Doi sensei. The others I know what they look like, but ... And we have Phyllis with her wife, Joyce. Her I don't know. And we have Hyakuten Inamoto at the back. And this is a German gentleman, a scholar. I don't know him. Olaf Böhm, his name is.
2025-10-04 13:51
⏱ 09:44:52
He's a serious historian.
2025-10-04 13:47
⏱ 09:46:39
I'd love to see such a picture and have Tadao Yamaguchi on the picture as well.
2025-09-06 17:20
⏱ 09:49:04
The repetition of what I sense happens in Japan amongst Japanese Reiki teachers. It is like a repetition of what happened almost in the 90s in the West.
2025-09-06 17:23
⏱ 09:49:16
So when I met Chiyoko sensei and Tadao sensei, I had the impression they didn't really realize what they had. In terms of Reiki. Tadao sensei often was looking at me or Chiyoko sensei was looking at me going like, 'Why you make such a big deal of Reiki? It's the most simple thing in the world.' Which on one hand was the innocent way of ... the innocent way they dealt with it. And on the other hand, it was also somewhat ignorant. They didn't realize how special their life, their family really was. Because they didn't realize how big this had become outside of Japan. They really had no idea. The first time I went to Taniai to Usui seinsei's birth village, probably nobody knew that Usui sensei, one of them of this small place, was known all over the world. They had no idea.
2025-10-04 14:05
⏱ 09:50:23
And part of the conflict, I am sure, is this: jealousy. Part of it. But I'm also sure that not all of it is that.
2025-10-04 14:06
⏱ 09:50:33
It's never just one is right and the other is wrong. There is no such thing.
2025-10-04 13:48
⏱ 09:57:31
There was, of course, Arjava, the moment in, I think, 2017 when you were quite ... public. When you released very controversial statements. I'm not even wanting to go so much - unless you want to delve into it - into the content. But it certainly polarized a lot of reactions. And I think it was involved ... or it may have caused even a development which ended in a, I believe, even legal stalemate between the Yamaguchis and the Hyakuten Inamoto. Can you share how you feel today about it and how can we share something with our audience to mend this?
2025-09-06 17:22
⏱ 09:58:29
How can this conflict between these two parties, how can it be resolved? Can be resolved by them talking to each other.
2025-09-06 17:22
⏱ 09:58:38
So if people don't talk to each other and if they don't work things out between each other, there is nothing we can do.
2025-10-04 13:48
⏱ 10:10:24
I'm not entirely sure whether that argument I can accept, because it affects all of us. To any culture, association who says, 'This is our internal matter, leave us alone. You don't understand anyhow', I say, 'Well, careful! You're integrated into a bigger self.' Particularly if you teach internationally in this case. You interact with others. And also when you at the same time teach inclusiveness or non-separation, I mean, there's a lot of contradiction there. That's why I'm saying, it's all too easy to say, 'Well, it's theirs.' But maybe that's only a nuance because what I hear more importantly than my own nuance here is that you're saying it would be good if people spoke with each other.
2025-09-06 17:21
⏱ 10:11:15
No, I've learned this in my life that when people have conflicts with each other, I leave it respectfully with them. They are to take care of it. And if they do, great [Gassho], nice, good job. And if they don't, that's too bad. But what to do? But don't take those conflicts onto yourself.
2025-10-04 14:15
⏱ 10:11:41
So if I have a friend whom you don't like, that's fine. If I have an enemy whom you like, that's fine.
2025-10-04 13:48
⏱ 10:26:20
Let's leave the ... in German we have such a good word for that: 'Altlast'. It means like an old debt. Old burden. An old burden. Leave those things where they belong ... with people and don't take it. Onto your own. So now we come to reconciliation again, our subject.
2025-10-04 14:17
⏱ 10:26:48
When other people have issues with each other, just get out of there. Let them deal with it. It's not your responsibility. Okay, we do our best to bring people together. And the funny thing is that - we've already talked about it a few times - I seem to be a polarizing factor. When all I want really is to bring people together. That's what I really want.
2025-10-04 14:46
⏱ 10:27:13
What people often overlook in a reconciliation process is, forgiving doesn't mean forgetting. And ... If I forgive, it doesn't mean I agree.
2025-09-07 08:27
⏱ 10:27:24
So what we need to do is we need to give it back where it belongs, with love and with respect and not allow that to disturb the biological and the human love which is beyond any of that. This is the thing and this is again reconciliation. So when you said, when Phyllis comes in or anybody else whom I have or had a conflict with, so you're ready to leave that all behind and just meet as two human beings.
2025-09-07 08:27
⏱ 10:27:56
Let's say the only two left on planet Earth, what you're going to do, you're going to fight? Are you stupid? So the two of you left, you're going to fight with them? You've got to be joking. So think of it like that.
2025-10-04 14:47
⏱ 10:28:10
So, people like us who work together in this very specific field, we all have stuff together that we need to work out maybe from the past. The best thing is to work it out. Otherwise, you have to do it next time. There's no escape. So better to do it now.
2025-09-07 08:26
⏱ 10:28:31
You then thought, if that is the rumour, I'd like to clarify it. Please. Absolutely, I never signed anything and I never will. I stick to my truth, to what I heard from Chiyoko sensei. And I didn't sign any papers.
2025-10-04 14:49
⏱ 10:28:44
Rumours ... it's always people talking about people and subjects that they don't know. We're going to have to accept that that sort of thing happens. And that ... it's unfortunate.
2025-10-04 14:51
⏱ 10:28:57
One of the main underlying principles of that is, in any kind of conflict, you always avoid casualties. This must be your main objective, to avoid casualties! Not to have casualties, but to avoid them. And that when you have your opponent in the corner, you open the door for them so they can go out unharmed.
2025-09-07 08:45
⏱ 10:29:26
I have always followed that.
2025-10-04 14:48
⏱ 10:33:53
Other than the highlighted statement (3:53) there is little for the MF. However, this video covers a controversial, rumour filled topic and may be attractive for PROMO.
2025-09-07 08:44
⏱ 10:33:53
So as far as I know, the Jikiden Reki teaching didn't change at all. Not at all from what I learned, it's the same. Exactly the same, no change. Jikiden Reki: The word 'jiki' means 'direct' or 'straight', 'den' means 'teaching' or 'transmission' and really means 'traditional'.
2025-10-04 15:09
⏱ 10:34:14
The teaching is still exactly the same, nobody has changed it.
2025-10-04 15:02
⏱ 10:36:22
Actually, maybe the word Jikiden - and maybe it's worth to elaborate, because very often non-Jikiden practitioners, they have the feeling that Jikiden means 'authentic', 'true'.
2025-10-04 15:11
⏱ 10:36:37
When Chiyoko sensei was found by other people who had previous Reiki experience. They thought, 'Ah! She learned from Hayashi sensei. It would be interesting to learn from her to see her point of view.'
2025-10-04 15:12
⏱ 10:36:55
All of us thinking, 'Phoa, we can learn from the source.' As close as possible.
2025-10-04 15:14
⏱ 10:37:01
And then they asked her, 'So now when you teach us, what are you going to call this?' And she said, 'Reiki is Reiki is Reiki. I would call it Reiki.' Then the people said, these were Japanese Reiki practitioners, they said, 'Ah, sensei, you don't really understand the point here. When you have a baby, you can't just call it 'baby', but you have to give it some kind of name.' And she said, 'No, no, Reiki is Reiki.'
2025-10-04 15:15
⏱ 10:37:37
At some point somebody asked her, 'What is the difference between what maybe we may have learned and what you will be teaching in the future? How will you be teaching?' And she said - she used an adjective - she said, 'I will be teaching jikiden', which means 'what I learned from Hayashi, I will not add my own stuff.' So when ... If you want to Google the word jikiden minus Reiki, you find all sorts of Japanese martial arts schools who say, 'I'm teaching what I learned from my sensei.' Not my own technique, like, let's say, Hiroshi Doi. No judgment.
2025-10-04 15:17
⏱ 10:38:26
So that's his choice. He's comfortable with that. Chiyoko sensei said, 'I'm not comfortable with making my own school or cocktail, but I will teach what I learned as good as I can from Hayashi sensei.'
2025-10-04 15:19
⏱ 10:38:40
Jikiden Reiki is not a different type of Reiki. Like people ask me, they say, 'Oh, I hear you do Jikiden Reiki. I do Usui Reiki.' And I'm like, 'No, please!' We all do Usui Reiki. But Jikiden is just the name of the school. It's not the name of the Reiki. Actually, it wasn't even a name proper. Like you said, it was an adjective. Like when we were speaking, it's how it was handed down. I think this is an important clarification. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Thank you for asking that.
2025-09-07 12:26
⏱ 10:39:10
So, when she said, 'Well, you know, I'm going to teach jikiden, the way I learned' then somebody in the room, I don't know who it was, said, 'That's a good description. Why don't you use it?' That's how they came up with Jikiden.
2025-10-04 15:21
⏱ 10:39:27
"Arjava and René unpack the Western feeling that Jikiden looks down on other styles. Arjava disagrees, explaining that 'Jikiden' is simply an adjective meaning "as learned." (Description)
Very educative and good PROMO. But even though a confrontative "Jikiden people look down on Western Reiki" I see little value for MF.
2025-09-07 12:29
⏱ 10:39:27
Granted, one must never forget that in the 90s, the Reiki world was very much dominated by the Western Reiki styles. And within the Western styles, in particular the Reiki Alliance, and their way ... They had no longer ... they've abolished what you might call the repeated Reijus and it didn't exist. But in other schools such as mine, it continued to exist.
2025-09-07 12:56
⏱ 10:39:53
But when I say that in my practice we have this, in my practice we have that, I'm just talking about my practice, the way I do it. And I'm not saying mine is better than yours. So, my suggestion to anybody is that whatever you do, whatever your practice is, you do that, this is your path. You work on that and if you feel comfortable with that, don't worry about what other people do. It's totally insubstantial. It doesn't mean anything. There is no Reiki that is better than another one.
2025-10-04 15:56
⏱ 10:40:25
So it's really ... The issue is always between right and wrong - moral ethics - better or inferior. And we always play on people's deficits, instead of encouraging people to see their perfection.
2025-09-07 12:55
⏱ 10:40:52
This is what I see.
2025-10-04 15:27
⏱ 10:48:20
And when I look at Usui sensei, I see somebody - maybe it's my projection - but I see somebody who wants to show his students how to be themselves, not to be him. I don't think he's somebody who wants sheep, who wants followers. That's my impression. And my thing is this, to hopefully be able to show people to find their own way of really dealing with themselves in life and become good human beings. That's my point.
2025-09-07 12:55
⏱ 10:48:54
So in the end, you can close your eyes and say, 'I've done my best.'
2025-10-04 15:27
⏱ 10:57:53
We don't have a problem with the truth. People always ... often think because of my work, I have some personal dislike or agenda with Takata sensei. Not at all. I ... know she had a job to do and she did that job. And without her, like we said, we wouldn't be here. So, so far so good, wonderful. But I also know that she adjusted some things in the teaching and in the history. And I have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with her. For God's sake, I never met her. How can I have a problem with her?
2025-10-04 16:09
⏱ 10:58:32
Reiki is ... I can only quote Koyama sensei again, 'satori no michi', the road of enlightenment. That's the point. Everything else is insubstantial. And all the little ego quarrels here and there. Okay, they are just part of the game. Without it, maybe it would be boring. A few ripples on the ocean. We need them.
2025-10-04 16:13
⏱ 10:58:57
We need the two egos scratching, polishing each other. So they become like two raw diamonds polishing each other. So they become more luminant, more shiny, more beautiful. That's the point. Because the ego is being scratched off. So look at it like that and we are all okay.
2025-10-04 16:16
⏱ 10:59:19
This video has confrontational elements (Stine's photo). And 'reconciling ones' (repetitions from previous videos). All together educative and thus PROMO material.
2025-09-07 13:34
⏱ 10:59:19
And in this little book, I think four or five times she says, Koyama sensei says, 'I think that Usui sensei's greatest achievement was that he didn't create a religion.' When I read that, even though I read it again and again, every time I read it I was like, 'Phew, I agree.' Because Reiki is for everybody. On Usui sensei's memorial it says, 'Reiki will heal the world and its people.'
2025-09-07 15:58
⏱ 10:59:52
So Reiki is for everybody. And in Reiki, in the Reiki teaching you find concepts from all the four big schools of thought in Japan.
2025-10-04 16:34
⏱ 11:00:04
That's just because Usui sensei took from the wisdom pot that he had, which is those four big teachings, and took a piece from here, a piece from there, a piece from there.
2025-10-04 16:35
⏱ 11:00:17
He did that very cleverly to include everybody.
2025-10-04 16:30
⏱ 11:06:07
So he was very clever in putting things together and making it comfortable for everybody, for all his people. And now that we are also involved, there are Buddhist Shinto influences in Reiki, but it doesn't disturb us in the sense that we don't have to convert to Buddhism or Shinto. But we can stay as we are. We can be Christians, we can be Muslims, we can be Hindus, we can be Jews, we can be whatever and be comfortable practicing Reiki. We don't have to subscribe to a certain view. We don't have to change our worldview. Everybody can do Reiki 'who has been given a soul'. And that's what Usui Sensei said and that's all of us, everybody.
2025-09-07 15:57
⏱ 11:07:01
This is for humanity. It's not for one group. It's for everybody. Actually, I think that is partly why Reiki has been able to conquer the world quite literally is exactly that it has this nature
2025-09-07 15:56
⏱ 11:07:15
And I think the worldwide spreading of Reiki would not have been possible if it had been labelled in any context with a specific religion. So that is a gift coming from Usui which he's given to us, which has liberated us and which holds the promise of reconciliation beyond the boundaries of culture and the borders of race and the gender issues we have. That's why I have such great hopes that if anyone can make peace, of course we start first with ourselves and in our families, but we have something so beautiful in nature, then it should be us Reiki people to be able to come to peace with each other.
2025-09-07 15:56
⏱ 11:08:03
So this would be my advice to anybody. Come to peace with yourself. When you are in peace, there is peace everywhere.
2025-10-04 16:30
⏱ 11:17:34
Usui sensei made a beautiful contribution to that by creating something that can facilitate this finding of the inner peace to anybody regardless of their religion, of their background, of their social status. Fantastic! So let's keep it that way and not put a label on it. Reiki cannot be labelled.
2025-09-07 15:55
⏱ 11:18:01
It was a difficult time when we met. At the time we met in Frankfurt when you asked me the first time. It was time when there was a lot of conflict going on, and a lot of naughtiness coming my way. And there was a point where I actually felt that I'm putting people around me in physical danger. That sounds a bit odd to you when you hear it like that, but believe me, it was really like that. And I felt that I had to get off the ether for a while. So for a few years I stopped giving interviews, I stopped doing public things, and it was good.
2025-09-07 17:06
⏱ 11:18:49
I think now is the right time, so it's good.
2025-10-04 16:55
⏱ 11:24:09
Yeah, and I think indeed that the reconciliation process - and if I use that terminology, I don't coin it to only my activities, not at all - there has been a lot of reconciling happening in the Reiki communities all over the planet.
2025-09-07 17:06
⏱ 11:24:26
People think that I'm super wealthy, I have this big organization behind me, this big machinery. But I'm a one-man show. It's just me. I don't have a secretary. I organize my own flights, my own schedule, everything. My email, my correspondence.
2025-10-04 16:57
⏱ 11:24:48
So, a lot of this is not because I don't want to answer. It's just I can't. I have too much. I cannot. I can't handle it. The volume is way too big. It's just like that.
2025-10-04 17:00
⏱ 11:25:04
Before I ask my last question, I'd like to quote, interestingly, Krishna Murti, whom you actually mentioned right at the beginning of our conversation. He said something on the question, 'What do you think about the Buddha?' Here is what he said: 'I don't think about the Buddha because thought doesn't enter the field of understanding. Thought doesn't exist where love is.'
2025-09-07 17:05
⏱ 11:25:34
The 'lousy communicator' (6:17) is PROMO material but irrelevant for MF.
2025-09-07 16:58
⏱ 11:25:34
Excellent PROMO material. Also for Germans - the only video spoken in German.
No highlights by TV and RV.
2025-09-07 17:16
⏱ 11:25:34
I thank you very much for the love you exude, I can bathe in and I hope you feel equally or you felt equally comfortable.
2025-10-05 10:12
⏱ 11:26:13
[Laughter]
2025-10-05 10:12
⏱ 11:27:09
And go out and spread Usui sensei's message. Which is putting your love, spreading your love around. With the people that you teach, with the clients that you touch. That's what he wanted. It must have been something that he ... That was important to him because on his memorial it says that 'Reiki will heal the world and its people.' You are his hands now, so, go for it.
2025-10-05 10:16
⏱ 11:27:34
Though there are no words ... I think this is good PROMO.
2025-09-07 17:20
⏱ 11:27:34
So, because I don't see myself as a guru, I have a 'guru' t-shirt. There used to be an Italian fashion designer or fashion label that was called 'guru'. So, sometimes I wear a t-shirt that says guru. I wear it mostly, almost exclusively at home, just to give myself the illusion that I have something to say there. Just kidding.
2025-09-07 18:47
⏱ 11:28:03
Usui sensei put himself on level two. The first level, the first level of Reiki ... is empty. There's nobody.
2025-10-05 14:01
⏱ 11:28:11
Usui sensei said to his students, his teacher students, those who were Shihans and Dai Shihans, 'Never stop learning, always continue learning from every student, from every client that you touch. You keep learning, and if you give yourself fully, then maybe one day you will surpass me.' And that for ... a teacher in a Japanese tradition!
2025-10-05 14:03
⏱ 11:28:37
It's not jealousy! It's gratitude and thinking, 'Wow, how beautiful.'
2025-10-05 11:55
⏱ 11:37:00
So the first place remains empty and open and luminous forever. How beautiful is that? It destroys the whole hierarchy. Exactly right. And puts you into the right place where you belong.
2025-10-05 14:05
⏱ 11:37:15
And I understood where he was going, the moment you think that you have reached something - and I have had experience like that where I thought I've reached some kind of state, inner state - you're wrong. You're wrong and you're asleep. Again, you must wake up again. And you need a slap.
2025-10-05 14:06
⏱ 11:37:40
That's beautiful. And Usui sensei made sure that we always keep that correct attitude to learn, learn, learn. This is why we are here. If we didn't have to learn, we wouldn't be here. And when the learning is finished ... Game over. And even if you throw another 50 cents into the machine, it doesn't start up again. So the fact that we are here means we haven't finished the job. We haven't finished learning. And I think ... Thank you again! I think that under the heading of reconciliation, we have been speaking with each other. And I would like to think that it has been a mutual process of learning, learning, learning. And that is maybe a very beautiful conclusion when we think in terms of reconciliation. That we're ... It's a process, it's an unfolding process which entails that we talk to each other, that we are respectful with each other, and that we are ready to learn, which means to let go of old rigid ideas and beliefs and open ourselves to the possibility that the reality, whatever that is, is different than what I had perceived it to be before this very moment when we got together.
2025-09-07 18:46
⏱ 11:38:59
But this is, I think, the most important ability to nourish, to develop in your life, to always reflect back, go back in and open your heart as much as possible. I remember once somebody asked me in the lecture, we had a question-answer session afterwards, 'What's the best way to protect yourself?' I said, 'To open your heart as much as possible.' That's the best defence.
2025-10-05 14:07
⏱ 11:39:29
PROMO!
Excerpts can be included in the MF.
2025-09-07 18:48
⏱ 11:39:29
So, I was doing the autogenic training. Then I learned about Zen Buddhism. And then I thought, 'Okay, they talk about meditation, these guys. What the hell is that?' 'And how am I going to learn that? From whom?' I had a friend at school. His father, his dad was from India. And his mum was German. And he seemed different than other people. So, one day I asked him. I said, 'Hey, tell me, do you meditate?' I didn't really know what it was. He said, 'Yes.' Because I felt he was different. He was quiet and somehow centred in himself. And I asked him, 'Would you teach me how to do that?' He was a bit hesitant.
2025-10-26 11:55
⏱ 11:40:17
I became his … Osho’s student, Bhagwan’s disciple at the time at the time.
2025-10-26 13:24
⏱ 11:40:32
When I left, he said to me, 'So how are you? What have you done?' I said, 'Oh, I've done intensive enlightenment and some other groups similar to that, with some bio-energetics and things.' He said, 'Good. When are you coming back?'
2025-10-26 13:25
⏱ 11:40:49
Then one day, I thought, 'I did it. I'm finished. The garden is beautiful. It's functional. It's perfect.' So then I had to keep two people busy in the garden. I went to one of my supervisors, Australian man, Neha, one of my mentors. He was 20 some years older than me. I said, 'Look, I've been telling her for a year that I need help. And now ... You know the place. It's running. It's producing. What am I going to do with this extra person now?'
2025-10-26 13:32
⏱ 11:41:26
They come back next year and do teacher’s training. And there were some people who had learned from Mitsui sensei.
2025-10-26 14:15
⏱ 11:42:05
So then one day, I get a phone call from one of my earlier students. One of those people who had been eagerly waiting He later on founded the biggest Reiki school in Japan, Vortex, it was called. So Toshitaka called me and he said,
2025-10-26 14:28
⏱ 11:42:24
So in the end she agreed, she called. Then the number ... The first thing that person on the other side says, 'Where did you get this number?' I'm listening on the speakerphone thinking, 'Oh boy, what a bad start.' After a while - Mrs. Koyama understood that she wasn't going to say where we got the number - she relaxed a bit, but all the time she just said, 'What do you want from ME?' Then Chetna said, 'Ah, well, my husband is a foreigner.' 'I don't care about Western Reiki, about Reiki that comes from another country.' I'm thinking like, 'Haw! What's going on here?' That was the first time I heard the word Western Reiki. 'He's writing a book about the Usui sensei, because what is known outside is... We don't think it's right. It seems to be all myth and we want to make it right and fix it.' 'I'm not going to read it!' I thought, 'Oh boy, she's very straightforward!' And then she said,
2025-10-26 14:42
⏱ 11:43:30
I said, 'Please check the Saihoji temple.' So she calls one, two. I don't remember. I think the third one. Finally the guy says, 'Yes, we have him here'. And then I asked, 'Do you know, do you know anything about him? What kind of person he was? Anything about his family's background, his work or so?' The priest says ... I said, 'Thank you. Do you know anything about the family?'
2025-11-01 13:47
⏱ 11:43:57
He said, 'Well, would you like to ask them?' I went ... (nodding modestly). 'Okay, I'll give you the phone number and the address.'
2025-11-01 13:51
⏱ 11:44:07
Incredible. One time I was at a book fair. I think it was either with the 'Reiki Fire' or the next ... I think it was 'Reiki Fire'. I'm sitting at the book fair in Frankfurt at my publisher's booth. I was to sign books and give a little talk for the readers. And then behind me somebody called, 'Oh, oh my God, how can he?! How dare he?!' Of course I'm not connecting it to myself at all. So I'm just sitting there wondering what this person is raving on about. Then I hear one of the secretaries saying, 'Oh, hello, good morning. I see you have a problem with one of our books. Actually, the author is just sitting right behind you. Why don't you go and talk to him?' So I turn around, I look at her. She looks like she's looking the devil straight in the eye and starts running! Like sprinting, running through the book fair, running away from me. I'm standing there going like, 'Huh?' You know, we could have just had a nice chat. It was incredible. I didn't expect that at all.
2025-11-03 21:23
⏱ 11:45:27
So when Ogawa sensei and Koyama sensei had died I thought, 'Phew. And now what?' Very soon afterwards I was given a book by one of Toshitaka Mochizuki's students, Aoki Sensei, also from my lineage somehow. In it he had an interview with one of Hayashi Sensei's students which turned out to be Chiyoko Yamaguchi. But her name was not mentioned. At the time the Reiki circuit was still small. We are in 1999. All the important players in Reiki we all knew each other, of course, and most of them came through my lineage anyway. So, the first person I called when I read the book was Toshitaka Mochizuki. He said, 'I don't know who it is but I know Hiroshi Doi knows it. Why don't you call him and ask him? He knows who that is. He has seen her. He had told me.' So I called him and I said, 'Hey, in Aoki sensei's book, do you know who that is and if they are teaching?' He said, 'Yeah, I give you the number.'
2025-10-27 13:53
⏱ 11:46:44
So the door to the Usui Association closed, another door seemed to open up, but there is something that happened before, I told you that really my basic instinct is longing for, looking for harmony.
I don’t like it when people fight.
So it actually drove me crazy, seeing the fact that what I had started to bring people together was pushing them further apart.
I didn't like it at all. It made me suffer and I didn't understand it. I wanted to know what is going on. In 1999 I started to organize family constellation workshops in Japan with Bert Hellinger, I asked him to do a constellation, a Reiki constellation. [See Video A67] Because I wanted to know why everybody is fighting. Where is the conflict? And how can we resolve that conflict?2025-10-27 15:00
⏱ 11:47:48
In the Reiki constellation, maybe we look at that latera little bit, there were some strange things. One of the things was that Usui sensei, or the representative of Usui sensei, he was just looking around. Very soon, in the beginning, he saw this big sliding window and beyond that a beautiful garden. And he took one look around and he just went for the window, for the sliding door, opened it and went out in the garden, never came back. You're kidding. No. So, and Bert said he has seen that before with like founders of something, when they've done their work, it's done.
2025-10-27 15:02
⏱ 11:48:25
And then we had the representative for Hayashi sensei. Afterwards when Bert talked to him, he said that whenever you, Arjava, are close by, I feel safe. And that ... it struck me. And I thought, 'What does that mean?' I don't really have a relationship with Hayashi sensei. I felt close to Usui sensei, but with Hayashi sensei, I didn't know anybody who learned from him or anything. But some alarm went off. It's like, huh? And then, two, three months later, I get in touch with Chiyoko sensei, who's a direct student of Hayashi sensei.
2025-10-27 15:04
⏱ 11:49:06
Please, I asked a question before addressing like finances, are you actually benefiting from the situation? And I know there are a lot of people out there with many question-marks. Answer some of them. Okay. Yeah, so you were asking about my financial dealings with the Institute. Really there are none. None at all. I just have a representational or I had a representational role as the vice president, but I'm not involved in finances whatsoever. Zero. Of course, I benefit from that role because I was one of two teachers who can teach senior Shihans. I benefited from that. But otherwise, I have no financial dealings with them, I'm not a member of any board or I don't get a salary, nothing.
2025-10-29 12:07
⏱ 11:49:59
When I asked about the dichotomy between Western Reiki styles and Japanese, or traditional as you call it, Reiki styles, and you longing for a haven, and this longing was a fuel for the success of Jikiden, this was somewhat of a loaded question, I have to admit. Because ... The follow-up question I have to that was, how far - unconsciously - was there the possibility of a ... a hidden ... not a hidden agenda but a motive, a motivation for you to keep up the dichotomy between the two worlds, because that field of tension was actually like a fuel, like an energy field from whence the success of Jikiden came out of? Not at all. Not at all. I always had that desire to bridge the two. Look in my personal life, same.
2025-10-29 09:01
⏱ 11:51:06
I already asked about succession, with Tadao in Jikiden Reiki and in your own ... And within that question, or behind that question, there is a fear, there is a concern in the Reiki community that the hierarchy, if I may call it that, within Jikiden is very much developing into something we've already seen before, the OGM, the Office of Grandmaster. This is something many of us - me included, I have an opinion on that - are not necessarily supporting. So this fear of the structure within Jikiden paralleling, or repeating possibly, the development of the OGM. Can you relate to that?
2025-10-28 13:10
⏱ 11:52:06
I benefited from that greatly. Like I said earlier, the bed was made.
2025-11-01 13:38
⏱ 11:52:33
Thank you for all the people who sponsored to help us with the project. To make this possible. And of course, thank you to those of you who are watching it.
2025-11-05 12:26
⏱ 11:52:44
And it emphasizes the self-responsibility of the student. And it doesn't give a false pretence, there is a singular unit. So, there is no illusion about an entity who has all answers. You are actually invited to find your own answers. To me, this is very close to the essence of Reiki of being continuously on the path.
2025-11-02 17:36
⏱ 11:53:10