Vitality, Causal Sound and Johrei

Gateway To Eastern Philosophy & Religion

By Justin F. Stone

From the book Gateway to Eastern Philosophy & Religion, excerpted and reprinted with permission from Good Karma Publishing, and available on www.gkpub.com.

~ Vitality ~

The prime force of the universe is vitality. What do we know vitality is? Chi! The prime force of the universe is vitality, divinity. Those of you who study T’ai Chi Chih and Seijaku, please remember that. The universe is the manifestation of vitality, or the fragments of divinity.

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~ The Six Darshanas ~

The six philosophies of India go back thousands of years and are the same now as they were then. These philosophies express eternal truths, whereas Western philosophies regularly supercede themselves. In the West, a new scientific discovery brings the demise of a philosophy or someone comes along and refutes a former philosophy. If Western philosophy deals with Truth, why do the philosophies change so often? In contrast, all of the Indian philosophies accept Yogic practice and, in fact, say that Yogic practice is necessary. These Indian philosophies are not counter to each other. They all complement one another, and each one serves a purpose.

In Mimamsa [the Fifth Darshana] they talk a good deal about the word. In the Bible it says, “In the beginning was the word and the word….” The Sanskrit word shabda, or “the sound,” exists before pronunciation. Pronunciation of the word dies away, so it’s not eternal. However, the meaning of the word is eternal. An example of this is found in Seijaku, the advanced form of T’ai Chi Chih. When we do the toning with movement, we continue to hear the sound after we’ve stopped producing it in our throats. We’re really trying to recapture something, which is always there. This concept is something I’ve never heard outside of India. The vibration of sound is eternal, the spoken word disappears.

In Hindu philosophy, there are two important points:

1) The Bindu: If everything were contracted it would come to one point that has no extension. It would have location but no extension. You’d almost have to be a philosophy student to know what I meant by extension. But it’s a point without any dimensions at all. This is what everything can be reduced to;

2) The sound from which comes creation: The sound, which is the vibration before the sound.

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~ Causal Sound ~

By the use of causal sound, we remake ourselves. And what do we remake ourselves into? We remake ourselves into potential joy. Some say that the transcendental sound of Om is heard only by real yogis. But some of you who meditate a lot, I am sure, have heard it.

Seed mantras are called bija. These seed mantras are aspects of the supreme Mantra, “Om.” Bija mantras are seed letters directly derived from the fifty primeval sounds and are very powerful. Each has an important inner spiritual meaning. Also, each Devi, god, or goddess has his or her own bija, dedicated to him or her.

The following sounds are some of the eleven seed mantras and their meanings. The first seed letter is “Haum.” Ha, the first part, is Shiva, and au is Sadashiva. Included in Haum, nada is sound, and bindu means the point from which everything comes, a dot with location but without extension. Nada and bindu together in Haum mean that which dispels sorrow. With the Mantra “Haum,” Lord Shiva is worshipped.

The next bija is Dum: da is Durga and u means to protect. Here, nada means mother of the universe and bindu means the action of worship or prayer. After Dum comes Kreem: Ka is Kali, ra is Brahman and ee is Mahamaya and so on with the rest of the remaining eight bija.

Sri Vidya says one must only do the mantras with initiation. Those uninitiated should not do the mantras. The mantras could harm one if not properly repeated. The last thing Sri Vidya discusses is Mantra meditation. Is the greatest Mantra meditation Om or pranava? Om contains all other sounds in it. Do not, if you live in the world, meditate on Om or use Om because Om is the mantra of the renunciate. If you begin chanting Om, (and there are groups who do), pretty soon you’ll be a renunciate though you don’t set out to be one. Your friends will fall away, you’ll lose your money. Chanting Om is like a sign on a store that says “We’re a non-profit organization.” We didn’t set out to be one.

It has been very tempting to me, many times, to use Om. Recently when I left California, I went to the desert for ten days and had a retreat. I was a hermit for ten days. I’d love to repeat Om, but I want to be active in the world. So I didn’t use Om at all. Instead, I did a lot of T’ai Chi Chih and meditation.

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~ Johrei* ~

One of the first times I ever used parts of T’ai Chi Chih mentally was the time I was still giving Johrei. I mentally did T’ai Chi Chih while giving Johrei, and the effect was startling. A woman seeking Johrei had come to the Church for the first time, and she was a rather strange young woman. She sat down in front of me (you can sit down in front of anyone; trained volunteers give Johrei.) She’d never been there before. The woman turned her back to me (first you turn the back, then you face.) I put up my hand, and I began to do Around the Platter mentally. (Around the Platter is the third movement in T’ai Chi Chih.) The woman let out a scream. I said, “What’s the matter?” She said, “The heat! I can’t take it! The heat!”

When you give Johrei, you feel certain heat in your the hand. I was wearing, at that time, the talisman of the Healing Church. At any rate, I gave her a little Johrei and finally she just left. She didn’t do the prayer or the bowing that is traditional at the end of treatment. She just left. A week later, I gave a talk at the East/West Culture Society, down near Vermont Street, and she was in the audience. She came to see me. She looked bewildered. I said, “What’s the matter?” (I’d never met her before the other day.) She said she’d been wandering around for a week feeling that she was in a great cathedral with shafts of light coming down through it. She’d been unable to go to work. It was almost unhinging her mind. I never gave Johrei again. The Church who trained me had talked a little about the karmic factors involved. I didn’t realize the power of what I was doing. Why my power was so great, I don’t know. Doing T’ai Chi Chih mentally really stepped it up.

*JOHREI: The act of focusing the hand on parts of the physical body by one trained to do so in the Japanese “Healing Church” know as Sekai Kyu Seikyo. A piece of paper worn in a locket around the neck, with the word “hikari”, written on it by the religion’s founder (Meishu Sama) or his descendant, is the “Sacred Focal Point” that gives power to the practice of Johrei. The word “hikari” means “light” in Japanese. Those receiving this Johrei often feel a strong heat, and the church reports many wonderful “cures,” though it emphasizes it is raising the spiritual vibration with Johrei and not attempting to heal. This is an extremely interesting and, the author believes, efficacious way to use the Chi (Prana) to raise the body heat and bring about “purification”.

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