Retrospect

Now that it's 55 years, one Bachelor of Science and a Ph.D. in Mathematics, a marriage, divorce, a house, and homelessness, later, I think the Huna that Lani explained to me is looking very good.

Western Science is cautious about knowledge. The idea that we all have to be objective and stick to observable facts and regard all theory as tentative until disproved is a great way to enforce the caution that science needs.

But the Huna denial of objective reality takes Western Scientific caution further. It regards theories as not even tentative but relative to the needs and aims of the theorist. The Huna as I understand it is more scientific than Western Science.

Also, after years of consideration, I've come to the conclusion that the core religious thinking of the Kahiko is not faith-based, but philosophy-based.

Lani said that the myths and legends were only for entertainment and illustration. He compared fabulous stories of Maui to stories of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or to the idea that God sits on a cloud and has a white beard. The Huna is the real religious thinking.


The Huna doesn't suppose that gods are persons. When Lani talked about moving in and out of mental states, he said the gods couldn't do that. A god is a mental state, he said. It's the way humans are superior to gods, that as persons we can change our minds, but gods' minds are fixed.

Today I would put it this way: the different gods represent the different possibilities of mind. They are like masks. People can move among them, putting them on, taking them off. You shouldn't let one get stuck on you. You're more than all of them.

It's a view that doesn't require beliefs at all. It's only a view. Like all the best views it survives by seduction, not force. It doesn't demand that you accept it, it entices you. It makes no sense to proselytize for it. It's not about believing, it's about seeing.