← LearningTwo chairs

Does Attunement Transmit Anything?

Two chairs

A ceremony of about twenty minutes, and a real disagreement about what happens in it.

The question

When a Reiki master attunes a student, is something passed from one to the other — or is the ceremony the whole of it?

Round 1
The chair of transmissionPractitioners say students describe the same distinct sensations during attunement without being told what to expect.
The chair of the ceremonyA ritual that marks a threshold changes how someone carries themselves afterwards. That's real, and needs nothing transmitted.
Round 2
The chair of transmissionPractitioners say the lineage is tracked carefully because what passes comes through a chain, not from one person.
The chair of the ceremonyConsistent sensations fit a consistent setting: expectation, stillness, another person's full attention.
Round 3
The chair of transmissionPractitioners say every initiatory tradition holds that something moves from teacher to student that instruction can't carry.
The chair of the ceremonyNo mechanism has been proposed that survives examination, and none is needed to explain what people report.
Where are you sitting?
The chair of transmissionThe chair of the ceremonyNeither — I’m still listening
Held open

Both chairs agree the attunement does something to the student. They disagree about where the something comes from, and no test has been designed to separate the two.

Something happens. Where it comes from stays open.
scroll to hear both
1 / 7