HUNA, ITS FORTEAN PROBLEMS AND PARTIAL ANSWERS
by
Max Freedom Long
(Fellow of the Huna Fellowship)
Just before Pearl Harbor, as one may read in an exciting article in the December issue, 1943, of THE PARADISE OF THE PACIFIC magazine (Honolulu), a Fortean event of some magnitude occurred, perhaps two events.
For as far back as native history goes, there have been, from time to time, mass materializations of the dead, usually at night, and often making up a traveling crowd of men, women and children, laughing, scenting the air with the perfume of mountain maile, a fragrant vine used for wreaths. These crowds or groups were heard and often seen, but, in passing, did not injure the living spectators.
On the other hand, there were materialized marching armies of Hawaiian warriors and their chiefs, often carrying lighted torches, and beating drums. These men of war usually killed anyone of the living met in their line of march, so, the living, when hearing or seeing the approach of a ghostly procession, either fled or hid at a safe distance until the marchers had passed.
A part of the magazine account reads: "It was shortly before midnight (December 6th) when the entire valley was awakened by the sound of marching men. One by one the villagers sat up in bed and listened; some went to the doors and looked outside. Nothing was to be seen - but there was the sound of steady marching, coming from the point of the heiau (ruins of an ancient Hawaiian temple platform)... at the head of the valley, through the village - and onward to the sea."
After the passage of the ghostly army, people went out to investigate the possible cause for a scream which had been heard earlier, in the valley above the settlement, and there discovered the lifeless body of one of the young men of the community. There was no mark of violence on him, but the older Hawaiians had no slightest doubt that the young man, who had been taught in school to scoff at ghostly matters, had been killed by the materialized warriors when he remained in their line of march.
This village, Maluhonua, according to the writer of the article, is not far from Pearl Harbor. Mention is also made of a similar march in the Lumahai valley on the distant island of Kauai, on the same night, and of an elderly Japanese found mysteriously dead in the same way, in the path of the marchers.
............
Dr. John Tanner, an investigator who spent some time in Hawaii, once heard the sound of invisible feet shuffling along in procession at night in the Waikiki district near the site of a dead king's summer home. He hurried to the old Royal Palace in the center of the city three miles distant, and waited there to see if the procession would arrive. In a [23] short time it arrived, coming from the direction of Waikiki, but turned off short of the Palace and stopped upon reaching the royal tomb in the burial ground of the neighboring Missionary church. (Kawaiahao Church.)
Like other matters of a Fortean character, for which we can produce only partial answers, the mass materialization of ghostly marchers raises many questions, three of which are:
(1) Where did the ghosts get the ectoplasmic (or other, visible or invisible) materials used in such mass materializations?
(2) Where did the ghosts get a sufficiently large supply of force (such as vital force) to manipulate the substances used in the materialization? (In seances, materialization often uses much vital force.)
(3) What form of consciousness (as a "spirit") produced the materializations, and how did it (or they) do it?
If we look to Religion for answers to these three basic questions, we find little to help us. "God" is supposed to do everything, and no mention is made of ectoplasmic or other substances, or of forces with which to produce and shape them.
Mother India has long frowned on spiritistic matters, and offers only an indirect and vague idea of invisible substances and pranic energies (thought of as useful mainly to the living).
Psychic Science, built largely on the findings of S.P.R. workers, offers us the first source of detailed and logical information. Ectoplasm, both visible and invisible (the latter can be very firm and strong, as seen in Dr. Crawford's experiments with invisible psychic or ectoplasmic rods which extended from the medium across a room to lift heavy objects). Mediums have been found to dematerialize in part or in full while bodies for the dead have been materialized for temporary use. The vital force of medium and sitters has been used to the extent of weakening almost to the point of exhaustion. Question three has been left unanswered on the whole, although it has been suggested that, in some mysterious way, the spirits of the dead learn to manipulate substances and forces in a manner impossible to the most learned of the living.
The Huna System of the Polynesians (especially the Hawaiians) offers far more, by way of a complete set of answers, than does any of the other psycho-religious systems, ancient or modern. (Check Theosophy and New Thought, as representative).
To the kahunas ("Keepers of the Secret") the idea of "substance" was contained in the word, mea, which means any form of substance, tangible or thinned to nothingness. Ectoplasm could be tangible or could be so thinned out that it could not be seen or touched - and still it could be charged with human or other grades of vital force and made to take on strength, with or without visibility or tangibility. Of this mea the invisible bodies used by us after death are constructed. In such bodies the surviving two spirits of a man live, store earth memories (taken along in these shadowy bodies with the spirits when leaving the dying body) and, store supplies of vital force drawn from the living (or other sources, and used by the poltergeist type of spirits for materializing and throwing stones, lighting fires, throwing water, etc.)
Only the kahunas seem to have considered the matter of whats type of conscious entity there might be behind the production of apports and fully materialized normal bodies for the use of the departed spirits.
The Huna answer is that above the level of the conscious, there is a superconscious entity, which has a better way of thinking than we who are less evolved. It has also a more potent force to use, (seemingly a higher voltage of vital force). This superconscious or Aumakua, because of its superior intelligence, can so use its superior voltage of vital force (made by stepping up the voltage of ordinary vital force of our level to the atom-smashing point) as to break solid human flesh into invisible ectoplasmic substance - together with garments at times - and reform it as a clothed body for the temporary use of a spirit.
How? The kahunas believed that we of the conscious mind (uhane) level, cannot understand the superconscious and its methods except in rough outline. But some things were clear enough. Man has two spirits, a conscious and subconscious, and each has an invisible aka or "thin" body. The thin body of the subconscious spirit is a mold of every microscopic tissue of the body, and retains this mold shape after physical death. In full materializations, this enduring thin body can be filled (as a mold) with substance of some ectoplasmic nature, manufactured by the superconscious from borrowed human flesh, from living creatures or plants, or, perhaps, made from some basic "ether." (Vital forces may come from a like variety of sources).
Huna offers three new elements to complete the finding of Psychic Science and make possible an explanation of most psychic phenomona. These new elements are: 1. The superconscious. 2. Super-vital-force of a voltage sufficient to "smash" the atoms of denser substances and make them into the visible or invisible ectoplasms, then re-solidify them into aka molds to produce apports or materializations. 3. The aka, of which every body or thing is possessed. The three aka bodies of the three spirits of man carry vito-electric charges, and have, therefore, magnetic fields, which are visible to psychics and often through Kilner screens as "auras". (The kahunas seem to have believed that all substance must be composed of a mixture of consciousness-vital force-aka. The presence of vital force in the aka mold solidified the latter into tangible "substance." Invisible hands can be "solid" to the extent of moving objects.) (The three conscious "spirits" of man, and the three aka or invisible bodies - one for each conscious entity - with the addition of the physical body, make seven units. These check off against the "seven bodies of man" in Theosophy fairly well, but three voltages of vital force compare poorly with the idea of the 49 pranas.)
Thanks to S.P.R. efforts and to Huna additions, we have, after over a century of effort, arrived at a tenable explanation of the triune man and of the phenomena produced by him while in the flesh or out of it after death. Even if it were not for the hope that we may eventually go on to instant healing, weather control and changing the future, to say nothing of fire-walking, seeing the future, etc., etc., we could still find much satisfaction in the fact that progress in the Pioneer Fringe of the psycho-religious field has been so emphatically resumed. Nor does it discredit our great S.P.R. men because they failed to discover the missing elements which make an explanatory hypothesis possible. Thanks to them and their scientific investigations, we may, in the course of time, restore and perfect Huna to greater utility.