Great Construction

Understanding (Seeing) God

     I will never forget. It was just about the time that I had begun my research of religions. A twenty-year-old woman, the daughter of a middle-class family, had spent several years in a sanatorium for a pulmonary disease. She was not getting better, so I was asked to look at her. In those days as a member of Oomoto, I conducted spiritual healing with a method called chinkon kishin. After two to three weeks of spiritual treatment, she improved greatly. The cause of her illness were the workings of the younger brother of the family head, four generations past. He had gone missing and ended up as a corpse in a field. Of course he had not been enshrined. He did not have a grave and had fallen into hell. Not able to bear the sufferings of hell, his only thought was to get enshrined, so he tried to get his family’s attention and make them aware of his desire by making the daughter ill, but the family had not perceived the problem, and thus the spirit believed nothing was left but to take the daughter’s life.
     Here is how I discovered the facts of this story. It was when I was performing spiritual therapy on the daughter for the third time. Sitting at the daughter’s side, suddenly the mother stood up and with a beastly look on her face, headed toward me and made a grab for me. Simultaneously, in rough language, “You got in my way and helped this girl I was trying to kill. I am so mad I am going to kill you,” she said. I was surprised. I had often heard about spiritual phenomenon but this was the first time I had encountered an actual case. I said to him, “Please, please, sit down,” and he became quiet. “Who are you,” I asked. Thus began an exchange between us and I heard the story related above. Then, I said to him, “If you succeed in taking a person’s life, you must go down to a terrible hell on account of the sin,” which at first he doubted, but as I continued to explain, he slowly he came to understand what I was saying, and pledged to cooperate to try to heal the woman.
     The daughter’s mother was about fifty years old, the ideal age for a medium, and while possessed, became completely selfless with no self-consciousness whatsoever. Usually the more one is able to suppress self awareness, the better is one qualified to be a medium, but such individuals are very rare because most people keep awake to a certain extent, thus self-consciousness intrudes.
     The daughter’s condition did improve, but when it appeared it might be regressing, the mother visited me one day.
     “Over the past couple of days I feel like I have been spiritually possessed at times, so I would like to ask you to investigate it,” she requested. I immediately conducted a chinkon kishin session. She sat in meditation pose with praying hands. I recited a norito prayer, and before I was even finished, she made an utterance. Her hands held in a praying pose trembled and her breath became hurried. This is the usual condition in instances of the phenomena of spiritual possession. The question and answer session that resulted is as follows.
I: Who are you?
SHE: I am a god.
I: What god are you?
SHE: I am a god that has the role of expelling evil.
I: Why did you possess this person?
SHE: Recently a demon has been interfering with your efforts to heal the daughter of the physical body I am now possessing, so I have come to teach you how to protect against such demons.
I: All right, What method is that?
SHE: All you have to do is, every morning, face the northeast [Ushitora] direction, scatter some salt, and recite a norito of expatiation.
I: Thank you very much. Can you tell me your name?
SHE: I cannot tell you now.
I: There are various things I would like to ask.
SHE: I came to teach you how to perform purification, so I cannot talk about other matters. I am going now.
     Upon saying which, the deity immediately left the mother’s body. At the same time, the mother opened her eyes and said, “Was I surprised!” I asked her what she was surprised about, and she said, “When you began to recite the norito, I heard what I thought was a swoosh from the back and there was someone sitting beside me. When I looked, I saw a very large human shape with long, black hair wrapped in a white cloth headband. Observing more closely, his garments of tree leaves shone with a beauty of five colors, sparking so brightly in my eyes. The body was very large, and he was sitting but his head reached to the ceiling lintel. At the moment that his figure entered my body, I became selfless.”
     Actually, during the session when I first heard the words, “…a god….,” I was on my guard because I had frequently heard of spirits that falsely claimed to be of a divine rank. But as the conversation described above continued, I realized that this was not a false god, but a true god. Later I learned that the name of this deity was Kunitokotachi no Mikoto (Earth Eternal Standing Deity) and that the description of him given by the woman was his appearance when manifesting force of maintaining stability. Kunitokotachi no Mikoto is a ancient god of the highest levels who has been enshrined in many localities throughout Japan.
     In later years, many miracles were shown to me by this deity. Often, throughout the years, this deity possessed me, taught me various matters, protected me in various ways, and bestowed blessings upon me.

Essays on Faith, page 70, January 25, 1948
    translated by cynndd