Longing for Power and My Own Insensitivity
At first, I came to the seminar because I wanted to know how I should live as myself. But once I actually attended, what first caught my interest was the channeling and the channelers, which were quite popular at the time. This stirred up an old feeling within me—an urge to draw out my own inner power.
I regarded channeling as an ability, in other words, as a form of power. Naturally, I wanted to discover that power within myself and make it grow. What did I intend to do with such power once I had unearthed it? Perhaps to boast of my abilities and stand above others? To read people's minds and manipulate them? Everyone likely has their own motives. In my case, I thought that having such an ability would help me progress more smoothly in the work of looking into my own heart, which was what the seminar was teaching. And if that work went smoothly, I believed it would be a shortcut to discovering the truth I had long been seeking. Even here, I was foolishly calculating, letting my head take the lead. I was inflating thoughts centered on my physical self and my intellect.
Yet, contrary to my calculations, I was the very picture of long-standing insensitivity. By "insensitive," I mean that the shell of the physical self was too thick for anything to truly resonate in my heart. This learning was not about understanding with the head, but about understanding with the heart—and in such a state of dullness, that was impossible. I did practice self-reflection and meditation, but I had no real sense of how much I was actually feeling it in my heart. That state lasted for five or six years after I began learning. During that time, the teaching that "we are children of God, we are God" honestly felt unreal to me. And as for "El Ranti Taike," I have to admit I had only a vague, half-understood sense of what that meant.
Still, I had no shortage of material for reflection. I had always been selfish, willful, and self-serving, so the thoughts I had directed toward others were nothing but self-centered. The idea of being "pure, righteous, and beautiful" was laughable; I could only agree wholeheartedly that my heart was pitch-black. I didn't believe in angels either. My confidence in the strength of the physical self had already crumbled in the face of my husband's illness and death. In truth, though I might call myself fine or admirable, my life in the physical world was quite ordinary, nothing remarkable. In the seminars, I remained dull and unresponsive, and I could feel those words ringing hollow inside me.
In this lifetime, I had not particularly devoted myself to any faith in an external deity, nor had I immersed myself in reading the Bible, philosophical works, or books on the spiritual world. So when people spoke about Jesus or Mary, or about the reincarnation of the Buddha, I listened as if it were someone else's story. I had thought at times that I might have lived in the same era as Jesus or the Buddha, but rather than connecting that to my present self-reflection, I was more interested in it from simple curiosity. That said, as I mentioned earlier, I had taken the founder of a certain religious group into my heart, so I would unconsciously compare that founder with Mr. Tomekichi Taike, who led the seminars. The founder gave impassioned lectures and demonstrations with all his strength. By contrast, Mr. Taike's speaking style was calm and even-toned. At the time, the seminars centered on channeling and channelers, and while I was drawn to the seminars themselves, I felt less of a pull toward Mr. Taike as a person. This was because the presence of the founder I had embraced loomed large in my mind. I had no way then of understanding in my heart what that meant. Even so, as instructed, day after day, I wrote in my notebook about the thoughts I had directed toward my mother, toward the founder, and toward the people around me.
One of the first things we were told upon gathering for the study was to reflect on our mother—that is, to look at the thoughts we had directed toward her. My immediate reaction was, "There's no way I can do that." The feeling was instantaneous, accompanied even by a sense of aversion. I instantly sensed a thick wall between myself and my mother. Of course, this was in reference to my physical mother in this lifetime, and in truth I did not especially dislike her. But the feelings I carried toward the countless mother-consciousnesses that had lived on within me—tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps beyond number—must have been that intense. The consciousness of "mother" is the warmth within me, and my fierce rejection of that warmth, my turning away and closing my heart to it, was undeniable proof of how I had existed until now.
Even so, I already felt there was something here that I had been searching for all along. So I tried, in my own way, to work through the tasks I was given in the seminars. I followed the instructions faithfully. At such times, I often thought, "How nice it must be to be a channeler—you can see into your own heart so easily. No matter how much I try to look into my heart, my dullness keeps me from reaching the deeper layers. How can I become more sensitive? I want to be sensitive soon."
And then, every so often, another thought would drift into my mind:
"Not becoming sensitive yet—that is my love for myself."
Looking back now, I realize that even then, my physical self (the false self) and my conscious self (the true self) were moving back and forth within me. And it was true—had I been sensitive at that time, I would have lost my sanity long ago. As in the past, the overwhelming energy of putting myself first would have consumed me, and I would have ruined myself with it. That would have derailed my plan for this lifetime. What I needed first was to remember the warmth of the mother. It would take time to steadily nurture that foundation within myself; the time simply wasn't right yet, and my true self was telling me so. Though my dullness in the physical self lasted a long time, it was, in fact, just right for me.
Experiencing the Release of Darkness at the Seminar — and the Joy It Brought
Time passed, and by around 1998 to 1999, even my once-insensitive physical self had gradually begun to grow more responsive. At the seminars, I could now fully feel my previously motionless body being stirred into action by the energy within me.
By then, the seminars had shifted from the old style—where channelers performed channeling—to a new approach based on the idea that everyone is a channeler. The focus became a different form of channeling, the so-called "release of darkness phenomenon." In these sessions, Mr. Tomekichi Taike would conduct what was called pointing. This was a practice in which each participant experienced, through their own body, the negative energy they had cultivated within themselves. It became the central activity of the seminars.
I could never quite understand why my body reacted so intensely when Mr. Taike pointed at me. Without a word being spoken, without anything happening outwardly, my body would leap, thrash, and roll about on its own. And from deep within my heart, the thoughts that emerged were nothing but curses: "Damn you!"
I was given many opportunities—connecting with my mother's consciousness, connecting with the consciousness of others—and I experienced this countless times. The ferocity of the energy that resisted Mr. Taike was nothing short of top-class. It was extraordinary. I felt my guts boiling with rage. I hated the look in his eyes at the seminar venue. I felt as if he could see straight through me, and that only fueled my resistance, over and over again. "Damn you, disappear from my sight!" "You're an eyesore!" "I'll kill you!"—I hurled these words at him endlessly.
Yet in time, I came to feel strongly in my heart that, contrary to the venom in those words, what was actually rising up within me was a cry of joy. I was blessed with the good fortune of being able to continue genuine reflection and meditation, right there in the seminar hall. The experiences I had in my heart brought a joy beyond words. It was as if my thoughts were racing through my entire body, surging up from the depths of my being, and my physical body was blown away altogether. I was having experiences far beyond anything the physical mind could ever grasp. It truly was learning that could only be understood with the heart—learning that the heart alone could know.
The Collapse of My Religious Views and Repentance Toward the Truth
Through repeated experiences of feeling, in my own body, the tremendous energy that resisted Mr. Tomekichi Taike, I began to realize something: the smallness of the religious founder whose presence I had once clung to in my heart before coming to the study. That figure, whom I had held in the dimension of the physical mind, had now shrunk to the size of a mustard seed within me. This became clear as I caught a glimpse of the vastness of Mr. Taike's world of consciousness—and of my own world of consciousness.
The "power" that had once captivated me in that founder was utterly mistaken. It was of an entirely different dimension from the power that comes from the world of truth. My heart—not my physical mind—grasped this, and because it was my heart that understood, I truly felt repentance welling up from the depths of my being. I realized that I had existed all along in a completely different, completely mistaken world. All I could do was repent, for what I had been holding onto in my heart was nothing more than my own small, insignificant self. I came to know in my heart just how small—how truly small—I had perceived myself to be.
Just as the insensitive physical self gradually becomes sensitive, the seminars repeated various trials until my dull self could reach that point. Through many different approaches and methods, it may have appeared that I was being nurtured by Mr. Taike. I have heard that some even believed he had personally discovered and carefully cultivated me, but that is entirely mistaken—a view born of seeing through a distorted lens. True, Mr. Taike believed that among those who gathered at the seminars, there would always be at least one person who would awaken, but that did not mean I was specially chosen. I was born into this lifetime with my own thoughts, my own resolve. And after many turns in my own journey, I finally came to recognize that resolve within myself. That is why I responded to Mr. Taike so openly.
I knew in my heart that this was the very path I had been seeking all along, so I kept my focus entirely on myself. I did not want to waste the chance that had come my way. The opportunity was there equally and fairly for everyone, and Mr. Taike was not looking at each person as a physical being—he was sensing everything from the world of consciousness. He stood in a completely different place. And had others in that position honestly looked into their own hearts to confirm where they themselves stood, I believe things might have turned out differently. Sadly, their hearts turned outward instead of inward.
Encountering the Website and a New Stage of Learning