0:00
Well, the short answer is: I don’t know. The longer answer is that, ähm you know, his paper is on …what happens to an oral tradition when it’s taught through a number of generations and it goes from one culture to another culture and the changes that happen within the practice. Is this… Why are the changes made? And is there a developmental process actually going on? And these kind of questions. And then.. so that’s the general kind of theme of his thesis. And then what he did, was he used Reiki as an example of that and especially the time of Hawayo Takata because she was the person who took Reiki as a Japanese practice, well actually Usui Shiki Ryoho, and then brought it to another culture and then within that (1:16) how did she… let me start again. (1:26) How did she translate not just the language of Reiki but the culture of Reiki? How could she bring the Japanese culture into the practice of Reiki at the times and the moments when it was important for the actual practice to be understood?
1:54 (coughs)
And this part, I think Justin does beautifully.. for the most part. I mean of course I don’t agree with everything that he has surmised or come to, but I do really like his approach, because he really gets that this wasn’t about making Reiki… for instance some people have said “well, she made Reiki more Christian because she was teaching Christians” – but, this just drives me crazy but ähm…He saw that she needed to, for instance, add this precept particularly “honor your parents, teachers and elders» because for a Japanese person this is THE fundamental principal that every child grows up with and this is where you… this is what your life revolves around. And, of course, in our culture that is not necessarily true.. (laughs)
3:02

5:20
Justin said: «Well, you know, I have the the steamship manifest, you know, that shows when she arrived in Japan and when she left… so, you know, this is like physical evidence. So I went «well, hmm … OK». (laughs) And you know, what I find really amazing for me, is that (0544) in telling the Reiki story in… well (0547) in accepting the Reiki story and listening to it from my grandmother all these years and then it obviously, because Reiki has been so profound for me the history has gone into me, into this like profound sacred box or something inside of me. And it’s not to be changed. So when there is pressure to actually shift things a little bit, it takes time, I mean it’s not going to be «well, ok, it was 6 months instead of a year». It’s a very significant thing for me, because it changes the pace of the story for me.
6:36
So there are lots of these little things that Justin presents. Now, they were profound for me, I don’t know how it will be for, you know the other people in the Reiki community. For some people who are maybe a little bit less precious about the history than I am, it will be a relieve, because they’ll say «ok, so this is all based on facts, now I know I am not lying, so now I can tell the story, you know easily with more confidence».
7:11

7:11
So..ähm.. I do believe eventually that what will happen and what I am working on, actually this is my l’le project, is to keep the teaching story and to write the other story that’s like a parallel with it so that people actually don’t try to mix the two, which is what’s happening now … they are trying to make the teaching story more accurate, and the teaching that is not the point of the teaching story, to be accurate or to, you know, to have facts in it. So I feel that it will be really interesting to see if I can do this in meeting these scholars and so on and these researchers and really kind of putting together this historical thing that actually has very …there is a lot of parallels with the whole, you know, with the stories and so I’m hoping to be able to do that at some point and … so this is my l’le project… that comes out of all this research.
8:26
The other thing is that I am happy that there are, I would say, mindful and sincere scholars who a really taking Reiki seriously. For me this shows (0841) that Reiki  is ähm… the presence of Reiki is becoming more……well, I want to say ”worthy”, but that’s not really the word… (0901) somehow there is a recognition that Reiki is being a significant influence on the world population … So, I am really happy about that … so that’s a kind of an aside process that is going on with this research for me.
9:28

0:00
…
0:17
ok… this is just an aside, but unfortunately there was actually a panel in Erfurt at this conference about this very thing and I couldn’t go to it because it coincided with Justin’s presentation. It was really maddening…
0:44
So… when.. in 1979 when I travelled with my grandmother, I first heard the story of Reiki, I just thought «… it’s only unbelievable». And.. because you know I had no experience of Reiki, I didn’t even know what Reiki was really, as far as to practice or the energy or anything. And I had to use other people as a kind of test to see whether my grandmother was like really crazy or if she was actually saying something that was a value to people. But people sat and listened to her and they were respectable people and you know, it’s like.. I just finally had to surrender to.. that she was saying things to people that I couldn’t relay to but these other people did, I mean, they were awestruck by this whole thing.
1:51

1:51
As I grew to have more relationship with Reiki and to start teaching it and to recount the story myself, what I realized was that there was a transmission of energy that was happening through the story, that I had no control over, like it just happened and I wasn’t consciously making it happen, it just happened. So, one of the odd things about the story of course is that (0225) Hayashi.. no, Haw.. ähm.. (0227) Usui’s story and Hayashi’s story pretty much remain the same as my grandmother told it. But when I came to my grandmother I knew like way too much information. So I had to start sorting out which information I actually told in classes, which became a part of the story and then what about me? (0251) Right? …
2:53 coughs
(0257) So, then Paul and I started to do these Masters intensives together in 1993. And when we came to telling the story, I would tell the first part of the story and then he would tell the last part of the story. And so it was interesting to listen to him and see what he left out and what he said and so on. And what we realized was that information does not carry energy as well as story. So we left out the date she was born and we left out you know, all this stuff and just talked about “when she met Reiki”. (0340)
3:42
So then (cough) god.. (0347) so then I had this insight that, (0350) ähm (pauses) (0358) it was not the story of four people but it was a story of Reiki and how it emerged through these people’s lives. Which was a good perspective for me because it really helped me when people started to add birthdays and you know, when people died and all this factual stuff… but it’s not about people. It’s about Reiki. So that helped some people.
4:26
And then…when the memorial stone was found was a really big thing, because that was the first real kind of substantial body of information, and lo and behold, what was on the stone collaborated my grandmother’s story. Well that was like «shuuu» relieve!
4:59

4:59
And what I have done now in… recounting how she actually told the story and the things that I have changed of the story is things like this: she used to say «and he studied for 7 years, and then he went to the US for 7 years and he went so and so for 7 years, you know, he was the in monastery for 7 years». And I realised that the 7 year thing …
05:32-05:35 oh, I should have asked some of the Japanese people.
5:35
But I realized that the 7 year thing is kind of a Japanese way of saying: for a… he did this for a long time… but they have to be kind of more precise or there is something magic about 7 years or I don’t know why… So it’s like not understanding the actual contexts of a lot of her way of tell you the story. These were changed into kind of «facts» just by dropping them. Does that make sense?
6:12
I call this a teaching story, because it is… you know the content of it is to teach the way the Reiki came into the world, the way that the practice emerged, some of the very fundamental principles of working with Reiki as an energy, some of the fundamental lessons of every Reiki student. And it is of course based on historic fact but it is teaching story and that’s where the magic lies. It’s how people… so the story became a part of me and the part of me that tells the story induces a kind of trance-like state in the listeners, and it’s really a fascinating process. And I wouldn’t be able to repeat this with another story, I don’t think or maybe I can now but I certainly when I was a young master I couldn’t have done it. But for those people who actually want to have history, I think it is really important to have some kind of accompanying history that underlies or creates a foundation for the teaching story. I don’t firstly need it but I know that some people do.
7:48

0:00
ähm.. 0007 It took a few years for me to understand that my mother had been with my grandmother during the time that she met Chujiro Hayashi and began to practice Reiki. And what I understood from her was that she had been initiated in 1st degree with Chujiro Hayashi. And then that was it. She didn’t do 2nd degree. And for most of the time in our relationship from 1980 when I became… understanding about being a Reiki master, she was not happy with the way that Reiki was being taught, that it had been changed through the culture and that we didn’t respect it.
1:08
It was a kind… it was something like.. in polite society you don’t talk about religion, politics and then I had to add Reiki, because her political ideas were very different than mine, so we never talked about politics and we didn’t talk about Reiki because in the end, you know, when I got older and more mature in my Reiki understanding… for her, Reiki was something private, it was not a series of phenomenas, it was… it was something that was practiced without.. being surprised in some by how it worked.
2:09
What she saw in the students of my grandmother and me included, 0216 was that we.. we shared a lot, we shared a lot about… (repositioning herself)
2:32

10:26
And… I think it’s very human to want to find the real story of creation you know, it’s like… native tribes all over the world, you know indigenous groups of people have a creation story and when I listen to some of their creation stories I think well that’s total fantasy, but what I have learned over the last 30 years in listening with different ears to these stories is that they are based on truth, they are based on the truth of the tribe. And that truth lives on through the tribe and keeps the tribe nourished, you know on these energetic-physical-spiritual levels.
11:23
And…. The Reiki story as is told by Hawayo Takata in truth… you know like in factual truth, I have no idea you know how factual it is and I never cared. But what I do get when I tell the story, not because I believe it, because I tell you in the first ten years I told that story because that’s what I needed to do as a Reiki Master. And when I saw what it did to the people who were listening to the story, I thought well there is something more going on here than I can perceive because it’s not like I told the story so well or I told the story so accurately or I told, you know, I’m such a big person that the story made a difference in people’s lifes. I mean as a young master I was just astonished by the effect the story had on people by the energetic transmission that came through that story.
12:31

12:31
And I believe that there is truth in that story, a kind of bigger truth that no fact can destroy. And that .. this concentration on fact has been a little misused, not.. I don’t think.. not consciously but through the motivation of saving people from the untruth, whatever that is… which I can’t go there myself… And the other things is that … I feel like there is a drive in some people and perhaps it’s more male than female, for having really solid foundation, really like mental truth, like I know this to be true (1338) (cough) …. and 
13:48
.. my basis of truth of the story is the way that I feel when I tell the story and the effect that is has on my students. So these are two really different measures of truth and I would say generally species-wise that intellectual is more masculine and feeling is more feminine.
(1413)
However it is my… it’s one of my bucket-list-things to do is to bring these two together and to be able to have peace with this because I have to say…
14:32

0:00
So, if we could generalize and say that this informational truth was sort of masculine and the feminine truth was from feeling then there would be a wish for me to bring these two together and it’t kind on my bucket list of things to do before I die that somehow these two will come together peacefully, not in competition but in understanding that they actually complement one another. And this the thing that again is… always.. a little irritates me, because.. people write books or they want to save the Reiki community from another lie or whatever their motivation is and I think it’s too bad that… we don’t really want to serve the community and what I mean by that is not to be so egoistic about it, you know to feel like I’m going to save the world or I’m going to write the best so and so or whatever and all the research basically that has been done, where I ‘ve been able to see the actual facts have supported the story as I have gotten it, received it from Hawayo Takata.
1:44 ähm (räusper)
There are not very many… there have been one or two little things, where I’ve had to really think about “what did she really say?” and “did I use different words?” and “did I misunderstand this part?” and so on but for the most part it’s been totally supportive. …The publication of having the existence of the memorial stone in Tokyo..outside of Tokyo .. totally supports the story as it was told to me by Hawayo Takata.
2:25

2:25
So I’m fascinated (0229) by the times around Mik.. where, when, sorry …. (0234) I’m fascinated by the time and by the culture of Japan when Makao Usui lived, when he was borne, when he grew up and the cultural influences that he had on himself. (0249) (räusper) And I believe… that understanding these were really help researchers understand the context in which a lot of this was placed. And… one of the things that is really too bad, as far as I’m concerned, is that I don’t see the depth of understanding of the Japanese culture in many of the books. They write a book according to their mind, according to the year 2015 in Great Britain or you know 2014 in Denmark or someplace. And…. So what I try to do is to turn that around and to say to my students: “Just know that this is somebody’s theory, this is somebody else’s experience of Reiki. It is not the truth. The only truth that you need to be concerned about is the truth of your own experience. And don’t ever give that up!”
4:04