What Does Reiki Do?

[Denise]

REIKI BY ANY OTHER NAME?
The Energy of the Universe Flows Around the Bishops' Blockage

May 2010
By Hurd Baruch with Moira Noonan

Hurd Baruch, a retired attorney living in Tucson, Arizona, is the author of Light on Light: Illuminations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ From the Mystical Visions of the Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich (Maxkol Communications, 2004). Moira Noonan, a native Californian, is a former Reiki Master Healer turned Catholic catechist and international speaker. She is the author of Ransomed From Darkness (North Bay Books, 2005), which chronicles her journey from New Age spirituality back to the Catholic Church.

Do you remember the "Masters of the Universe"? Even if you weren't introduced to them by Thomas Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities, surely you read about them in your newspaper. They were the thirty-year-old guys who were pulling in multimillion-dollar bonuses for arbitraging Russian rubles against Thai baht, for stuffing GMAC bonds into pension-fund portfolios, and for packaging subprime mortgages into those triple-A-rated collateralized mortgage obligations (then called "CMOs" and now known as "toxic waste").

Well, forget them — if you can. With the economic collapse, they have passed from the scene. Allow us, instead, to introduce you to the "Mistresses of the Universe." Who are they? They are the women who purport to channel the energy of the universe, bringing it down to the level of your body, as an alternative form of healing. The most widespread technique they practice is known as "Reiki therapy," and, according to an article in the National Catholic Reporter, "Many women in Catholic religious orders have become Reiki masters or practitioners and regularly teach or practice Reiki therapy at their orders' retreat facilities or spiritual centers around the country" (Apr. 16, 2009).

What, exactly, does Reiki (pronounced ray'-key) claim to do? Name your ailment, and Reiki supposedly can help to heal it. According to William L. Rand, a "Reiki master" who has written a popular instruction manual, it has "aided in healing virtually every known illness and injury," including multiple sclerosis, heart disease, cancer, influenza, and impotence. Even treatments lasting as little as a few minutes have allegedly set and mended broken bones.

Contrary to the claims of medical science, Reiki practitioners say that our health problems stem from negative psychic energy in the body or its "aura" (the multi-layered energy patterns that surround every living thing). What a Reiki treatment does is to surge energy through the aura and the body to break apart the negative energy blocks and charge the body with positive energy, thereby healing it.

So, Catholic nuns are handling energy? Do they need training as electricians? No — it's not physical energy, it's psychic energy, you see. All that is needed to channel the energy is the practitioner's hands — or even just her mind.

Psychic energy? Perhaps they need training as psychiatrists? No — it's the life energy, which purportedly animates all living things. The life energy (ki) is guided by the God-consciousness (Rei) — all the Reiki therapist needs to do is set it flowing and the life energy does the rest.

God-consciousness? Perhaps they need some sort of religious training? Well, no. Anyone who has the money to take a few lessons with a Reiki master (called the "attunement process") can learn enough about the hand positions to become a Reiki practitioner herself. With that comes the gratification of being looked upon by the hoi polloi as one who has the spiritual energy of the universe at her command.

Sounds goofy but harmless, doesn't it? Perhaps physically, if the availability of Reiki treatments does not dissuade one from undergoing the scientifically appropriate medical treatment. But there is still a spiritual danger from undergoing, much less performing, Reiki treatments.

Let's go back a few years, to when the Vatican was deeply worried by the flaky spiritual movements of the new millennium. In 2003 the Pontifical Councils for Culture and Interreligious Dialogue issued a pastoral response, Jesus Christ, the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the New Age, which discussed the many different currents of New Age philosophies, and identified some common elements among them. Of note: "The cosmos is seen as an organic whole; it is animated by an energy which is also identified as the divine soul or spirit; much credence is given to the mediation of various spiritual entities," and "humans are capable of ascending to invisible higher spheres and of controlling their own lives beyond death." The Vatican saw that "New Age offers an alternative to the Judeo-Christian heritage. The Age of Aquarius is conceived as one which will replace the predominantly Christian Age of Pisces…. People who wonder if it is possible to believe in both Christ and Aquarius can only benefit from knowing that this is very much an ‘either-or' situation."

One New Age practice cited by the Vatican was use of the "enneagram," a symbol originally used for divination, but which came to be used as the organizing principle for classifying personality types into nine standard categories. It found its way into Catholic retreat houses and parish spirituality programs, and was used, in certain places, as a screening test for candidates to the priesthood and religious life. At the request of the Vatican, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops produced a draft report in 2000 on the origins of the enneagram. One of the conclusions of the draft — which was never issued in final form — was that "the enneagram has its origins in a non-Christian worldview and remains connected to a complex of philosophical and religious ideas that do not accord with Christian belief."

Although Reiki was not specifically mentioned in the 2003 report issued by the Vatican, it fits right into the spectrum of New Age spirituality, as my co-author Moira Noonan knows from her own sad personal experience. She began her descent into that spiritual darkness when she was taught in a pain clinic that she herself was divine and that she could create a pain-free reality for herself. She went through apprenticeships in various New Age spiritual practices, including clairvoyance and regression therapy and studies with Indian gurus and Native American shamans.

Noonan became a Master Healer in Reiki. While this therapy looks somewhat like the Christian laying on of hands, what she learned is that the symbolism of Reiki is deeply influenced by Buddhist traditions and relies on invisible spirit guides. Demon spirits are specifically invoked by name to confer their healing powers. Whether the improvement in some patients' conditions that has been attributed to Reiki comes from such demonic activity or simply the "placebo effect" cannot be known. In support of the latter possibility, a 2009 Pew Forum survey found that twenty-six percent of American adults believe there is spiritual energy located in physical things like mountains, trees, and crystals.

Catholic World Report cited with alarm the infiltration of Reiki practice into dioceses and convents in a July 2008 article, whose title hit the nail on the head: "A Disturbing Substitute for Faith." Author Anna Abbott reported that, in order to reassure Christians, "Jesus is called a ‘Reiki master'…. The archangels and Mother Teresa of Calcutta are ‘spirit guides.' The anonymous ‘life energy' is renamed the Holy Spirit."

In light of the foregoing, it is easy to understand why the U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine came down hard on Reiki. In its "Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy," issued in 2009, the committee pointed out that the "universal life energy," which Reiki practitioners claim to channel, is unknown to natural science and is not part of the Christian tradition. After His Resurrection, Jesus gave believers the power to heal in His name by a laying on of hands (Mk. 16:17-18), but it is clear that such power flows from Jesus alone and is not a natural phenomenon available to humans at will (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1506-1508).

At its core, Reiki is based on a gnostic premise: Through secret knowledge, one acquires the ability to manipulate cosmic forces. Therefore, the bishops' guidelines state that "for a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems." As to one's physical health, the technique has no scientific support or even plausibility; as to one's spiritual health, the technique requires a superstition that "corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's religious feeling and practice in a false direction."

The sound analysis by the Committee on Doctrine resulted in this practical judgment: "Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions such as Catholic healthcare facilities and retreat centers or persons representing the church such as Catholic chaplains to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy."

Reports in the Catholic media indicated that the bishops' guidelines were received with a shrug. While the document has no canonical authority, and thus any enforcement is left up to individual bishops, our research has found very few avowedly Catholic healthcare institutions that still admit on their websites to offering Reiki therapy to patients. We did, however, turn up a very interesting fact: There is another, almost identical, therapy not mentioned, much less proscribed, by the bishops that many Catholic institutions are openly offering, called "Healing Touch."

According to literature put out by the Healing Touch Program (the self-described "worldwide leaders in energy medicine"), practitioners "use their hands with light or near-body touch to help clear, balance and energize the human energy system, thus promoting healing for the mind, body and/or spirit." Sure sounds like Reiki by another name, doesn't it?

It is instructive to read the comparisons made by practitioners who have been trained in both techniques. Both seek to enlist the "energy of the universe" through the use of the practitioner's hands, and work with the patient's own energy field. In both, the practitioner's intent is important. Both claim to have a spiritual component, and both seek to release "negative energy blocks" in the body through a knowledge of the meridians and chakras through which the energy flows. (Meridians are the lines along which acupuncture points lie, while chakras are the seven centers of spiritual energy in the body, according to yoga philosophy. The chakras supposedly take the universal life energy and transform it into the different energy frequencies our body uses.)

One minor difference is that Reiki is taught by a process that requires an "attunement" of the pupil by the teacher, supposedly to turn on the student's ability to channel Reiki, whereas an attunement is not required in learning Healing Touch. Also, while there are specified hand positions that can be used in Reiki for different ailments, they are not essential, whereas different hand positions are essential in Healing Touch.

Most important, Healing Touch doesn't carry with it Reiki's baggage of known Buddhist origins and the esoteric oriental symbols used by Reiki masters. Perhaps that is why Healing Touch slipped under the bishops' radar screen. The result is that Reiki practitioners can, with a modest amount of instruction and, of course, money for workshop fees, become certified as Healing Touch practitioners and continue their "hands on" business in Catholic healthcare institutions. And so, the energy of the universe flows around the bishops' negative psychic blockage, and the beat of New Age spirituality in Catholic hospitals and spiritual centers goes on.