SPIRITUALITY
A Life of Divine Purpose
Serious, studious, devoted to learning,
Okawa excelled scholastically growing
up, eventually going on to study law at
The University of Tokyo. In an effort to
discover the purpose and meaning of
life, in addition to his law and finance
studies, he read books on philosophy
and religion and sociology, consciously
modeling himself after such great
thinkers as Plato and Socrates.
Then, on a spring day at age twenty-
four, he had a spontaneous spiritual
awakening. “Suddenly, I sensed an
invisible presence with me in the room,
and almost simultaneously understood
by intuition that whatever it was, it
wished to communicate with me. I ran
to get a pencil and some blank cards.
My hand holding the pencil began to
move as if it had a life of its own. On
card after card it wrote the words, ‘Good
News, Good News, Good News!’ ”
50 www.yogicherald.com Jan. 2020
Despite constant communion with
higher beings and a fierce, growing
determination to somehow help
humanity, Okawa continued a normal
career path, entering the world of
international finance and trade, quickly
rising through the ranks and moving to
New York City. But after just six years,
the call of spirit became too strong to
resist. Shortly after his 30th birthday in
1986, he decided to leave the world of
high finance and found Happy Science.
In March 1991, the organization was
formally recognized as a Japanese
religion dedicated to “bringing
happiness to humanity by spreading the
Truth," by uniting people and inspiring
global peace and harmony beyond all
disparities of ideology and religion.
“From our point of view, there is no
reason to fight one another, because we