Go near the light

Theirs is a belief as simple as raising your hand, but powerful enough to create lasting world peace.

So say members of Sukyo Mahikari, a worldwide spiritual organization that teaches that all individual and community problems can be resolved or improved through an invisible light energy radiated through a person's hands.

Sukyo Mahikari, which welcomes people of any background or faith, was begun in Japan by a former military officer nearly 41 years ago and has spread to an estimated 1 million members in 75 countries. The organization has 18 spiritual-training centers in the United States, including a Seattle-area location in Mountlake Terrace.

Scores of Sukyo Mahikari practitioners in the Northwest regularly travel to the Mountlake Terrace center from as far away as Oregon, Montana and Alaska.

They gather to radiate the light energy to others as well as receive it, said Webster Grant, a Sukyo Mahikari staff member who offers guidance and help to members and visitors, similar to the way a Christian minister tends to his congregation.

The local Sukyo Mahikari center, surrounded by houses and a mobile-home park, features a main room with an elaborate wooden altar in front, where members offer prayers and offerings. Because Sukyo Mahikari members usually radiate the light to others while kneeling on the plush carpet, the main room has no furniture besides a stuffed sofa and a receptionist's table and chair.

During a typical 50-minute session, receivers sit or lie down on throw pillows as the light energy is directed to points of their bodies. Generally, a member holds his or her open-palm hand a foot away from the person who is receiving the light energy.

Anyone can benefit from the light energy, regardless of whether they believe it works, Grant said.

He believes the light energy is the Light of the Creator God, from which all things originated. Grant explained that the light energy of Sukyo Mahikari - which translates to "universal laws" and "true light" - is thought to be a way all people in the world can grow closer to the spiritual power that created them and, as a result, gain inner well-being and greater physical health.

The group teaches that through their negative actions, words and thoughts, people have progressively accumulated spiritual impurities that have clouded their elemental connection with God. Therefore, people have generally become more negative - depressed, angry, cynical, disrespectful, hurtful, violent.

But light energy, Grant said, can dissolve an individual's spiritual, mental and physical impurities.

"One's daily life gradually becomes happier and more harmonious," he said. "Negative phenomena begin to disappear . . . relationships with people get better, your relationship with your spouse gets better, with your children, with your co-workers, with your boss."

The Mountlake Terrace center has volumes of testimonials and scientific studies in which both members and nonmembers say light energy improved their lives.

Sukyo Mahikari was established in 1959 by Kotama Okada, a former military officer and successful Japanese industrialist who spent years seeking spiritual enlightenment.

In the early 1940s, Okada was diagnosed with several debilitating diseases, which doctors expected would kill him within three years. He reportedly immersed himself in his business and humanitarian efforts - determined to live the most God-centered life he could with the time he had left.

In 1959, after lying in a coma for several days with a high fever, it is said he suddenly awoke and received the first of many revelations from God, with whom he was said to be in constant contact until he died in 1974. The organization is currently led by Okada's daughter, Keishu, who members also believe has continuing communication with God.

When Grant, 53, a professional jazz drummer, was introduced to Sukyo Mahikari in 1979, "inside, I was dark and gloomy. . . . I was very unhappy," he said.

He had researched a number of spiritual teachings, training courses and techniques, but nothing had given him relief from feelings of depression, worthlessness and anxiety. "I had very low self-esteem . . . my relationship with my parents was not good - my relationships with people always went awry, I failed in whatever I did."

After a fellow drummer, a Sukyo Mahikari member, began giving light to Grant regularly, "my whole life began to turn around," he remembered. Grant said that receiving the light energy made him aware of the negativity that existed in himself and the fact that he was perpetuating a lot of it.

Grant, now married with one daughter and two sons, became a Sukyo Mahikari staff member about 15 years ago.

Another follower is Mihoko Hirata, a mother of two college-age daughters and one of the first Suzuki-method music teachers in Seattle.

She joined Sukyo Mahikari 19 years ago after she said the light energy saved her sister from undergoing eye surgery. Hirata recalls that toxic fluids had collected behind one of her sister's eyes, causing the eyeball to protrude.

Before going in for surgery, Hirata's sister received light energy for two weeks straight, at which point the accumulation started discharging through her nose, he said. After several more sessions of receiving light, her condition improved enough to avoid surgery.

Sukyo Mahikari, Hirata said, has become "the lighthouse of my life. . . . I used to be such a very nervous person, but now everything is so easy to accept and understand. I realize that nothing that happens to me is a coincidence; everything has a reason.

"It gives me a clearer understanding of where I came from, why I'm here, what is my mission in life."

Hirata's mission, as well as the mission of every person on Earth, said Grant, is to improve the condition of the world by helping others.

"This is a path to elevate spiritually," Grant said. "For us to fulfill the God-given mission of establishing peace on Earth . . . we all have the capacity of becoming divinelike. Every child of God has that capability."