00:00
My membership of this circle of 22 masters initiated and recognized by Hawayo Takata was very important to me. I felt that this circle held the energy of Reiki and the practice of Usui Shiki Ryoho up until now… And now there are four members of that circle still alive, that we know of. And Wanja has been not teaching for a couple of years. So now its Rick Bockner, Paul Mitchell and myself. We were the youngest when she initiated us all. And … I felt that as the Grandmaster, as the recognized lineage bearer that I was the spokesman for this circle. That in truth I couldn’t do anything to «change» the system or to alter the message without actually going back to the circle and somehow having agreement among us.
01:28-0130 (rülps) Excuse me.
 I think that from their point of view I was doing a lot of things they didn’t like but most of the things they didn’t like I didn’t like either. But it was happening, and so what can I do? y‘ know, like all the change… all the different kinds of forms of practice. There was no way for me to control that. And… I learnt that very early on that, y’know, my job was not about control, because it was impossible to control people. I didn’t have the personality of a police person. So, there was kind of a joke about having Reiki-police
02:13

02:13
But it was important for me to be able to hold the totality of what Hawayo Takata passed on as practice and know that the totality really was about the 22 masters and in all the different ways and variations that we practice.
That the truth of the practice was in the whole, no’… was not in this person’s practice or that person’s practice but in the whole group’s voice of the practice. And right now, y’know, what’s sad for me is that that circle is now not alive. In the sense that most of them have died.
03:00
So, now what we’r… what I’m working on is creating something called, which is not just being created now, I mean, it’s already in existence but the… to create consciousness about something called the “Master-Body”. Which for me is this collective of all Reiki Masters and that whether or not you choose to be an active member of this body you add to the body energetically, just by being a master.
03:33

08:07
and continued that teaching without her blessing as a master. And there is something about that that was really sad for me. So, our… our and I will say “Our” consciously, our understanding of recognition of mastery and lineage was so slim at the time that we were doing all this that I have to say, that we were really lucky we didn’t get into more of a muddle. (0841) And that now it feels like
08:45-08:47 (coughing in the background)
on some level because I don’t know anything about real lineage I can kind of invent what I want to about lineage and its OK but I also feel like it also is very inclusive… for instance … there are masters that I have initiated who don’t practice the system I do, their form is very, very different, so I don’t recognize them as Usui Shiki Ryoho Masters. At the same time there are other Masters who started out definitely not in this form of practice but have come through taking the intensives from Paul and I, but also through their own willingness to just connect with the energy of this practice
09:34
that they become practitioners though they were initiated into another practice of Reiki before which is fine for me. Some of them don’… can’t trace their lineage because they wer… they went to some kind of a music festival and in the middle of the music festival somebody said, «I’m going to initiate you as a Reiki Master.» and they do. And they don’t even know their name. But y’know, somehow they… that initiation was sincere enough that they actually followed the path of mastery and ended on my doorstep. And I said, «Well, Okaay..if you want to do this and are committed and you are sincere, then why not?»
10:18

0:00
Another application of form and essence is this piece about what… and the answer to the question “what practice is it that I follow”. So there is one, is initiations, that’s essence for me and the other is the form of practice, that’s the form, obviously. And there are many masters that I have initiated, who don’t practice this form but they have the initiations. So… and then as I said before, there are other people who have been initiated into another practice, who adopt this form. So for me both of them are equal. I don’t find that form is more important than essence or the other way around, they create a kind of partnership….
1:07
Those people are very.. in some way in a kind of bloodline, as you said, people who can trace their initiation through from Hawayo Takata or me or from Chujiro Hayashi. Then the… evaluation is on the form, because if the form is in alignment with this practice, then they’re practicing this system. If their form is somewhat out of alignment, but their intention is to practice this system, then they are.. they just have alignment issues.
1:58

1:58
If they are not intending to practice this system but are very close to the actual form of this system, then their intention is that they are not practicing this form – they are practicing another form. But then there are people who don’t practice this form and they are, you know, some percentage outside of the alignment and their initiation is from another form, then it seems that they are really practicing another form. So… I hope that was really clear?.. It seems not clear. Anyway…
2:49
If you want to speak about Barbara McGregor, I actually don’t know what her practice is, so I couldn’t make any kind of judgement. I do know that her…the way she teaches and her attitude toward other masters and so on is not in alignment with this system. She is very much of a woman on her own. And her students are her students… and I have known other Reiki masters who are like that as well. That they won’t teach or mentor anybody else’s students. And I have found that always to be disconcerting but I also accept it..
3:52
RV: when you say: ‘this sytem’, that’s equivalent to Usui Shiki Ryoho?
4:03
Yes, but now to be specific: it’s Usui Shiki Ryoho honouring the lineage of Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata and Phyllis Furumoto. Because without the lineage you can’t differentiate from all the other practices that practice but don’t honour this lineage.
4:27

0:00
One of the confusing things about grandmother’s teaching is that she called what she taught “Reiki” and she called the energy “Reiki”. However, the practice of Reiki was like a shortcut for Usui Shiki Ryoho and maybe Usui Shiki Ryoho Reiki. So… we all called it Reiki until like the beginning of the 1990ies. And then there were so many other Reiki forms of practice emerging that it was very difficult to know who we are talking about, it was very confusing.
0:52
Then in about 1993 or 94 there is this gentleman who was a master from Germany, Shunjan Joop Hilger. And he decided to take care of business because he knew that I wasn’t doing this, which I… appreciated his motivation, I didn’t appreciate what he did, but I appreciated his motivation. And he trademarked in Germany… the words Usui Shiki Ryoho and the Usui System of Natural Healing and the Kanji of Reiki. And so… I challenged him because he was starting to threaten people, that if they didn’t comply with his idea about what the practice was, then they couldn’t use the words.
1:55
So I went into a 2 year trademark…. what’s it called.. challenge I guess or something like that (background voice) … and I challenged him to the right to trademark these. And the attorney that I used in Köln..in Cologne said, when I told him my whole story, said: “well, if you are the recognized lineage bearer, the Grand Master, then they are yours.”
02:29-2:45 So … (talks to herself ….pause )

4:21
Once I got into the trademark thing, I found it fascinating, by the way. There was a way that we could have established an industry trademark so that everyone who passed a certain, very minimal criteria for Reiki could use it. And it wouldn’t have cost us very much money, because there would have been a lot of people to maintain this trademark, but…
5:02
Even if I had been able to trademark Reiki and keep it for this practice, I wouldn’t have made much money, because …the money you make in trademarks depends on how much people can actually pay for the trademark…(laugh)… and you know this is not much. So people though I was gonna become a billionaire or something having trademarked Reiki and I kept saying to people: “You know, Reiki is not Coca Cola”.. I mean…
5:36
So that was really interesting, but what happened is that some of the other Reiki forms of practice did go and trademark their own name, which was wonderful because that started then to separate out of Reiki as a big heading or the Usui System of Natural healing, it kind of took away some of the entities that were using Reiki. I ended up doing.. it’s going back to the original Japanese phrase which was Usui Shiki Ryoho… and then some other people started to use that also and then I just added the lineage so that it could be… the practice could be identified.
6:30

0:00
The Reiki alliance to become the organisation of licenced Reiki Masters, so Reiki Masters that were really clearly Usui Shiki Ryoho. It would have left the other practices open for anybody else, they could have applied for their own trademark, their own name and then everybody would be clear about who’s doing what.
0:36
And I wouldn’t have asked for money, I mean, they actually to apply for a trademark is not, if nobody is contesting it, is not that expensive. And if you want to maintain a trademark in that way, its not so expensive. The industrial trademark much different because you have to really adhere to a criteria. Because, if you ever bought a garment that was supposed to be pure wool and it had this little wool emblem on it, and it ended up to be rayon then you would be really disappointed and that trademark wouldn’t have any designated identifying power anymore and the same would have happend with Reiki.
1:26
So it’s very interesting, so people just assume that if you have a trademark you’re gonna earn money, which is really crazy. Mostly, as one of my business… my master who was in business and he sold medical equipment, like these new innovative medical equipment things to hospitals and medical centers and stuff, he said trademark are terrible, he said you don’t want to get involved with them, they cost lots of money and they are just a headache
2:01

2:03
There are a couple of other interesting points: nr. 1 I wanted to create another name for the Reiki that I do like … .. well like Barbara Weber came up with «Radiance Technique», she trademarked it, it was totally clearly hers, nobody fought her for it and it was really clean. You know, and that’s what everybody could have done in that moment, is to just have been clean. But it wasn’t, we weren’t there, we weren’t mature enough at that time and I am including myself and I couldn’t think of another name, so I went back to Usui Shiki Ryoho, which was not trademarkable because it was in common use and also… because it contained a man’s name and the man was not alive to ok it.
3:05
So then, after I couldn’t think of another name and couldn’t trademark Usui Shiki Ryoho then I thought, well this is Reiki just telling me: “ok, you stood up to somebody who wanted to sort of… exercise control over a certain group of masters and it was good that you said «no”. And I appreciate the Reiki Alliance for supporting me in handling the costs of this particular law suit.
3:49
And I feel like it was a good thing for us to do, for the whole Reiki community, because now…. in the… now people can not trademark Reiki and so it’s still… it’s the same, we still have freedom of use and… no one has to be the Reiki police. (laugh) .. So we get back to that again.
4:21

10:32:
and that we can be ourselves there. So we really opened the vision to including reconciliation with forms of reiki practice with different, even … different, I would say, factions or groups within the practice that I have, Usui Shiki Ryoho. And to be able to come together not to teach each other our systems but to share what we have in common which is so much more profound, what we have in common, than our differences. Our differences are mainly on a kind of physical level, of doing, but the difference … the similarities are about our humanness, our humanity and how we are touched as human-beings by the practice of Reiki. And what develops in us, in our practice of Reiki and that for me … (shakes her head in awe) far outweighs our differences. So, somehow if we can come to this place in ourselves, I believe this group of people that is working on manifesting this calling that we call Reiki Home ..
12:00

0:00
I don’t know their systems, I don’t know what the differences are, so I haven’t a clue so I don’t see the disparity personally and… because…. Yeah because I would have to ask him what does he really mean by Usui Reiki and by Takata Reiki because (0030) for me there is no Takata Reiki, (0033) there is Usui Shiki Ryoho and….
0:39
For me there is just Usui Shiki Ryoho and under this lineage. So it’s a very specific practice. And it’s ok for me that our practice is different than other practices. This is what was given to us and this is what we’re are practicing and it develops through the next lineage bearer, which is me. And you know trying to …. figure out how the term “Reiki Master” came so that he can kind of use it against people is just so like what’s the point?
1:23
Again for me I heard my grandmother refer to herself as a Reiki Master, I heard her to refer to other people as Reiki Masters, I heard her refer to Chujiro Hayashi as a Reiki Master, so I don’t see what the point is. (0140) äh.. (räusper)
1:44

10:48
So when I got to Russia I was told that I would have one day with people who wanted to be master candidates and at that time there were 2 or 3 Russian speaking masters and they had just be initiated but all the other masters initiating in Russia were from other countries and flew in and did classes and flew back out. And they were not able to ask for US$ 150 for first degree, they just couldn’t bring themselves to do that. So I was to address these master candidates and of course one of the big questions was about the money, US$ 10’000. So I tell you I did a lot of Reiki treatment on myself, I did a lot of nashing of teeth and I knew that I had to walk in there and say “you pay your initiating master US$ 10’000, I don’t care what they ask you, you pay it!”
12:03
So.. I went in and I was like trembling and there were 130 people in this room, wanting to be Reiki Masters. And I have to say, that was in 1992 or 3 or something like this and today I still know most of those people, like 85% and 90% of them were initiated. And they paid US$ 10’000. They got it instantly which was amazing for me because if I had addressed 130 Americans and said this to them, I would have gotten a lot of resistance. So here’s the deal:
1250-51 (räusper)
I went in and I said “you know, this system is like a recipe and I want you to know that I paid US$ 10’000 to my grandmother for my commitment to Reiki, for being a Reiki Master and at the time I had no idea why I was doing this, because I didn’t even know what that meant. And I said “over the years I’ve initiated many masters and I want you to know that whether you know it or not, you will be a Reiki Master in this system and you will be a Reiki Master in a world community and though you cannot imagine travelling outside of Russia, now, you will! And when you go outside of Russia, I want you to be the same, I want you to have the same commitment to the system, I want you to have paid the same money and I want you to be able to hold your head up and say I’m a Master of Usui Shiki Ryoho, just like you!
14:15

0:00
It’s specifically called…. (sighs) OK lets start again
0:14
When I refer to this system or the system or the system as I teach it or the system that Hawayo Takata passed on I’m speaking about a system called “Usui Shiki Ryoho” which was the original name of the system as Hawayo Takata taught it, however she just called it Reiki because it was easier. I guess. And… Usui Shiki Ryoho translated roughly into English is “The Usui System of Natural Healing”. So we used that phrase in English for many years up until about 1994 or 5 and then I reverted back to Usui Shiki Ryoho because many people took on Usui’s system of natural healing, but it was not really the Usui system of natural healing, it was something else.
1:19
But they didn’t understand that the naming the system actually named a certain form of practice. So when that became more clear then I also in the late 1990s decided to add the lineage because that really identified it as a specific practice. So for me its Usui Shiki Ryoho honouring the lineage of Mikao Usui, Chujiro Hayashi, Hawayo Takata and Phyllis Furumoto.
2:00

2:00
This particular system of Reiki practice has a specific form and a specific set of fundamental principals and values that is unique to this system. One of the things that happened in the mid 1990s is that there was a gentleman in Germany who 0221 trademarked  0223 äh Usui Shiki… no …. trademarked 0226 Usui system of natural healing, trademarked the Reiki Kanji and a number of other things and felt that he was doing this in service to this system because he felt that I wasn’t doing my job, which he might have been right, I have no idea. But I certainly didn’t want him to own the copyright in Germany, because he was sending threatening letters to masters and so on.
2:55
So I got into a very interesting conversation with him, we’ll call it a conversation between our attorneys and eventually they awarded these – trademarked phrases and the symbols, like the Kanji being a symbol at that point to me, because I was the rightful owner. Well by the time they did this, which was I think in 1998, Reiki was so common in Germany that it had become a household word and therefore could not be trademarked. Which on one hand I was very relieved because it just saved me from a really …. difficult process of trying to defend the trademarks while at the same time it opened it to a lot of people.
3:57

3:57
So that’s when I went back to the Japanese words Usui Shiki Ryoho. Still many people call their system of practice “the Usui system” or Usui Shiki Ryoho but that’s why I’ve added the lineage eventually because that really specifies it.
4:18
You asked about the Reiki Alliance and the Reiki Alliance is an organization that was founded by… partly by me and a group of masters initiated by Hawayo Takata, in 0432 ähm (räusper) 1983. And now of course the membership of the Reiki Alliance includes members from all over the world and from many, many different masters. The Reiki Alliance is a kind of … association for masters who practice this specific system. So they have a membership system where you have to be able to demonstrate that you practice this system in a similar way. And that feels fine for me. 0520 ähm (räusper) excuse me 0523
5:26

3:16
Now, when I die it’s very possible that his role will be subsumed or assumed by a circle of people who will come in and have collective lineage bearing. So it will be like a kind of a committee or circle of lineage
0339
but what I’ve, we’ve been talking about is that every 0344 ….OK, let me see where I was … 
3:52
So when Paul and I formed the Office of the Grand Master I thought it would be clearer if I were also be referred to as a lineage bearer. So this means that I carry the essence or the energetic essence of this system. And he does not replace me, he is taking on one of the aspects of the Grand Master position that I felt I couldn’t do at the time. Now whether or not one person will be able to be the Grand Master of this practice Usui Shiki Ryoho in this lineage … I don’t know.
4:39

0:00
I have this idea that this practice is like a heritage seed. It isn’t the practice that has the most members or students anymore but it is a practice that is seminal that is of the essence in the whole circle of Reiki forms and practices that we have today, because it was the seed
0041 (Geräusch) from which many of these came. So whatever happens to this system is going to affect the other systems of practice, the other forms of practice. And that’s okay because we are all interdependent anyway, I mean it’s obvious that we are. 0103 And ähm …
1:05
whether or not they recognize me as their lineage bearer, which of course they don’t or they would be in this practice, then… well that’s not quite true, so I have to go back.
1:21

1:21
Whether or not those people in practices that are named Usui Shiki Ryoho recognize me as the Grand Master, my passing and the succession will affect their practice to a certain extent. Not because they want it to but because it just is so, I believe that and it will affect… as it will affect all the other practices that call themselves something else. Mainly because a lot of people have founded their practice in resistance to me. And if you found a practice in resistance to me then I hate to say it, but you are as connected to me as those who feel like they are connected to me.
2:12
One of the things that I have asked people over and over again if they want to start their own practice, please go ahead and do so but name it something else so that students have an understanding about what they are practicing. So all the people who have Usui Shiki Ryoho as their, you know, name of practice are holding that name in some way in resistance to change it. Because if they chose Usui Shiki Ryoho at the time, even in 1988 they would have recognized me as the lineage bearer. Because it was in fact the only system basically that existed.
3:01

1:27
In the practice that I teach and maintain Usui Shiki Ryoho I have four different aspects: the healing practice, personal development, spiritual discipline and mystic order. And for me the 1st degree student in their first class in their first Reiki treatment experiences each of these, maybe just for a fleeting second, but it’s there.
2:01
So I would like to generalize into all Reiki practice, because I think that this is true from what I have observed and what I have heard from Reiki practitioners in many, many different forms of practice, that Reiki comes and it heals in the large sense of the word and the small sense of the word, it provokes, often our practice provokes own personal development and Reiki treatments can provoke a personal development process in the person that we are treating.
2:45

2:45
If practiced long enough and if needed, Reiki can become someone’s spiritual practice. And this for me is a choice of the student and if it is a choice of the student then it becomes a much broader landscape from which to operate as a human being. And as a community of people who practice a spiritual practice, such as Reiki, then we are a mystic order, a group of people who are able to have mystic experience without the benefit or intercession of someone else, like a minister, a priest, a facilitator, whatever. It’s really direct between ourselves and the universe. 0345 … 0348 räusper
3:53
So I can’t really answer the question “Yes” or “No”. (laughs) 0400 (René: thank you)
4:00

0:00
The aspects of mastery or the roles of mastery, as I have spoken about earlier, are specifically for the practice that I teach and hold, Usui Shiki Ryoho under the lineage that I carry. If to generalize this to all Reiki masters, what I would offer is that these are aspects of mastery as I see them. And everyone has a choice of whether or not they’re willing to take on these roles. So I see that a teacher is one that’s very obvious. And teacher has a very limited scope because even in our academic world, you know, you have a teacher and it’s for a certain course, for a certain time, for a certain number of classes. And then if you take the same class but 2.1, you get another teacher. So teacher is something who delivers something to the student.
1:20