When I was initiated as a Reiki master by Hawayo Takata in 1979, she allowed me to complete my master fee over time. With her death in December of 1980, it made sense to me to give the payments to her daughter, Alice Furumoto, as the recipient of Takata Sensei’s estate.
In recognizing Phyllis Furumoto as Hawayo Takata’s successor and grandmaster, it never crossed my mind to complete my payment to her.
When I received the Grey Book from Alice in 1982, I was touched by its beauty and how precious a gift it was. I was very grateful when Alice allowed me to use some of the content for the student booklet that I gifted The Reiki Alliance.
A few years later Alice called to tell me to send my final payments to Phyllis. When I spoke to Phyllis about this, she told me that the money I had sent her mother had funded the production of the Grey Book. I was honored to learn this.
At the end of the book is a list of 21 masters initiated by Takata. I knew one person was missing, George Araki. Phyllis later told me that her mother did not include George because there was no record of his having paid the master fee. This was one of the ways Alice determined who Takata Sensei had acknowledged.
George Araki and I went together to ask Takata Sensei to accept us as her master students. She also trained and acknowledged us together. As a professor and co-founder of the Department for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science at San Francisco State University, George was doing research in healing. His research was the exchange that he and Takata agreed upon for his master initiation. Not knowing this, Alice did not include him on the list of masters.
When we received our Grey Books, we were surprised. We knew George was one of Hawayo Takata’s masters and belonged on the list with us.
~Paul Mitchell
Kellogg, ID
March 30, 2021
