Perception
Truth is always subjective
Intuition
In March, I went to the casino on a hunch. Not that gambling means much to me. It was only my second visit ever, and the first time I only went along because of my friends, whom I then came to admire for the ease with which they played with the little money they had available. In 2 hours they had won several hundred francs, which somehow made sense; meanwhile I couldn't hold back and quickly lost my entire stake at a roulette table with 50/50 odds.
But now I had this hunch. During mental training, the casino suddenly appeared, and I saw a red 18 at the table I was standing in front of. So I wanted to follow up on it, since my intuition had already given me tips in financial matters before, and had I followed them consistently at the time, I would have suffered no losses in the financial crisis that followed the real estate bubble.
I find it important to also follow my own inner voice with practical steps. That way I prove to myself that I take my inner voice seriously. Then I can also trust myself better in difficult situations. And if I can trust myself better, others can also trust me better.
So I went. I only needed a 5-franc chip. After all, I had my intuition. Then I stood in front of table 3, was about to place my bet, and realized - that was the table where I'd had no luck on my first visit. I went to table 2 and put my chip on 18. Number 36 came up, i.e. 2x18 - it hadn't worked! I needed a moment to process that. At least - I consoled myself - I had trusted myself and tried. The ball rolled again, but I didn't care what came up. Yet not entirely, because my eyes suddenly glanced over to table 3 and its most recent results. I had to hold my breath and could hardly believe it. The 18 had come up there, while I was standing at the other table. And it came up twice in a row!
Now everything was clear to me. I had followed my intuition, but I had not followed it consistently. When my reasoning kicked in with the statistical hint about past bad luck at table 3, my quiet inner voice suddenly went unheard. Still, for one moment I had given myself over to the quiet voice, to the unknown, and with what force this small probability, this subtlety, suddenly entered my reality!
Many possibilities lie within the unknown. I could claim that it was quite certainly my inner voice, the situation almost feels like proof. But let's stick with honesty. Intuition is a fragile thing. Did I want to declare something true based on a feeling, something I had »perceived« as »true«? Could I repeat the situation? How reliable is my ability to see the future, really? How quick am I to claim that something is or happened a certain way? It certainly feels almost like knowledge! But it is always the lie that judges the truth, and even René Descartes taught that at the slightest doubt, nothing should be held as true. Truth is therefore always subjective.
With Reiki it is surely similar. I have doubts about what exactly is happening there and how. I don't understand it myself. Yet in my talks and seminars I work with stories and concepts that provide material for my assumptions. I must admit - there are claims that are soft and vague. There are case studies that were observed imprecisely. There are studies that I wish were true. How do I deal with it when an observation cannot be repeated? How do I deal with it when it turns out that a publication was not scientific? How do I deal with it when another study suddenly arrives at a different result?
When I want something to be true, it corresponds to my perception, my belief patterns, my identity. I let myself be convinced only by things I already believe anyway. I refrain from questioning rigorously or even running counter-checks. I will even ignore logical contradictions, and I will work with excuses.
Does that really serve me? Am I not committing myself to self-deception in order to pass judgment on my own truth? If it was intuition at the beginning of the story, then it came about because I knew what is. And that is something different from wanting something to be true just because I would like it to be!
It is hardly possible to say what is true - to write a book, for instance, called »The Truth About Reiki«. One thing, on the other hand, is quite easy: to disprove a claim if it is not true. To do that I don't have to prove much at all; one example is enough to show that things went differently.
But what, then, is the truth about Reiki? It still seems easier to say what Reiki is not.
I seriously ask myself whether, in my future events, I should only use case studies and studies to raise questions. I observe that my relationship to Reiki is becoming more and more, for me, a process of shedding concepts and claims. This is not true, and that is not true either. I feel good with Reiki, but is it perhaps »just« a placebo, or an electromagnetic effect coming from one's own hands? Do I need to introduce a new concept just because I don't know something? Isn't it enough to simply shed things? Does that bring me closer to the truth? What will remain in the end? What will really matter then? Could it be »Nothing«?
The past few months have brought me new insights in this regard. I will therefore be dropping 2 stories I have used so far from my upcoming Reiki courses. These are the 100th Monkey Principle and the Memory of Water.
The 100th Monkey Principle was meant to illustrate the idea of morphogenetic fields, according to which information becomes available everywhere in the world without direct contact - as in the report of a peculiar monkey behavior that suddenly spread from the Japanese island of Koshima to other islands and to the mainland at Takasakiyama - or so the researchers involved claimed in 1952. Today I know, from an interview with James Oschmann for the Reiki Magazine, that the story is not true. Sheldrake, the theorist behind morphogenetic fields, was already skeptical of the monkey story earlier on and had not used it in his own works and lectures. His theory nonetheless remains exciting and valuable: if I change, I change everything. Every successful therapeutic application will change the world and make it easier for others.
»The Message of Water« was made public in 1999 by Masaru Emoto, and in my courses I wanted to use it to illustrate the power of thoughts. Emoto found different crystal structures depending on which words (love, hate) or which vibrations (heavy metal, Bach's music, Reiki treatments, prayers) the water had been exposed to. The esoteric scene was thrilled, and the film »What the Bleep Do We Know!?« became a box-office hit. Products such as Grander water came onto the market and were sold at exorbitant prices so people could drink water »with better information«. Various studies now show that Grander water has no effect beyond that of ordinary tap water and human imagination, and that Grander technology for »revitalizing« tap water is ineffective. Emoto's experimental results could not be reproduced in other laboratories. By contrast, it is well known that the structure of water crystals depends strongly on temperature and humidity. The matching crystal can be produced from any water sample.
There are people who believe without knowing. There are people who believe what they know. There are people who know that everything could also be completely different. Only the latter will be free.
I am glad to be able to revise my opinion about the power of information. For what kind of victim would I be, suffering because someone may have shouted at and insulted the water I was about to drink! In fact, information has no power at all. It isn't even a fact, but merely something »in formation« - a claim, a perception, which may be based on deception. Information only becomes powerful once I decide to make it real. That, in turn, lies entirely within my own responsibility. That I can make all sorts of things real - health, illness, friends, enemies - that makes sense to me too. We call it the placebo effect in the positive sense, which urgently deserves closer research, as well as the nocebo effect in the negative sense.
There is no truth - except my own. That is why it already says in Mark 11:24: »Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.«
Axel Ebert • May 2012
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