The Egyptians recognized a level of complexity in the human being that eludes our generally materialistic and rational outlook. We might grudgingly concede a polarity between body and soul, attributing the former to earthly existence and the latter to a heavenly existence. However even t..his simple duality exhausts the metaphysical vocabuÂlfu~y of a secularized society. By contrast the Egyptians held a complex metaphysical system. The divine and the human 'Nera reconciled in flesh.
At t..lJ.e most material level the Egyptians conceived of the aufu. the flesh body. This composed and integrated all other more subtle bodies. The divine was believed to be present in matter. The corporeal remains were referred to as the lu'lat. This alone was without consciousness. The shadow ==-or shade was referred to as khabit. The sahu was the body ~ of gold. At the mental and emotional realms, the Egyptians - escribed sekhem the will, ren the name and ab the heart, .e seat of conscience. At spiritual levels we find the ka, ,6 animating spirit, the ba, the immortal soul and khu, the ivine intelligence. This hierarchy of being, from the physical to thespiritual, is not unlike that found in other metaphysical systems such as Qabalah.
The complexity takes us right into the burial chamber, the ho-use of gold, where it was customary to place sarcophaÂgus within sarcophagus, vehicle within vehicle. The mumÂmified body of Thtankhamun, Strong-Bull-fitting-of-created-
forms, Dynamic-of-Laws, Who-Calms-the-Two-Lands, WhoÂPropitiates-all-the-Gods, was laid in three coffins, a sarcophaÂgus and four shrines.
The tomb of Tutankhamun gives us a glimpse of a splenÂdour and glory beyond our imagining. This boy-king was an insignificant ruler, a pharaoh in the making; who was buried in a tomb originally prepared for another. His death was / /Page 103 / untimely, his funeral was unexpected. We can only imagine what glories tomb robbers have taken for ever. Yet in the tomb of a minor pharaoh we find exquisite beauty and craftsmanship beyond compare. This single complete tomb has shown us more than we could ever have hoped for. Here Tutankhamun rested within successive shrines, surrounded by the beautiful artefacts from everyday life and the symbols and images which promised resurrection.
Four shrines embraced the king's sarcophagus; each articuÂlated the Egyptian belief in the life to come, through the sacred language of symbol and funerary text. Winged discs, symbols of liberation and rebirth, decorated the roof of the outermost shrine along with royal birds, the vulture and the falcon. The tet knot of Isis and the djed pillar of Osiris spoke of resurrection and well-being. Extracts from the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day were designed to empower the deceased. Underworld guardians were depicted to represent the forthcoming journey and its trials. The great funerary godÂdesses Isis and Nephthys stretched their wings in protective embrace.
These themes were continued upon the sarcophagus. Its roof showed a winged sun, a border of tet knots and djed pillars were inscribed around the base, the four protective goddesses Isis, Nephthys, Selkis and Neith stood in high relief, their wings outstretched to encompass the sides.
It is recorded that a gasp went up from the crowd of assemÂbled dignitaries as the two sheets of covering linen were rolled back to reveal the outer coffin. Here was the face of Egypt in death. The coffin of cypress wood was modelled in relief with a thin layer of gesso overlaid with gold foil. Yet this was not the last resting place but only the first of three. The second coffin lay under floral offerings and proved to be even more magnificent than the first. It was inlaid with opaque glass to simulate carnelian, lapis lazuli and turquoise. The king held the crook and flail and wore the uraeus serpent crown along with the nemes head-dress, the traditional blue and gold striped headclotll. The third coffin was covered in a red linen shroud folded three times. The breast had been decorated with a collar of blue glass beads and various leaves and flowers. As / Page 104 / the mummy itself was unwrapped 150 pieces of jewellery were revealed. These were fashioned and positioned according to the Chapters of Coming Forth by Day. Here were the ritual symbols, the scarab, the serpent, the falcon and the vulture in a glorious evocation of the transformation from the human to the divine.
The gold mask of the pharaoh is arguably the most beautiful artefact in the world. The many contents of this tomb, its magical items and personal effects, its royal regalia and ritual jewellery are not the trappings of morbidity but a celebration of life. There is no doubt that the Egyptians =-envisaged an after-life. In truth the physical life and the after-life were seen as a continuous thread unbroken at death. The tomb is a testament to the wholeness of life. It contains the familiar symbols of life in dazzling combination. In death the Eg-yptians show us beauty beyond compare. In death we see the total commitment to life. Nothing that had known life was dispensed ungraciously. Two tiny foetuses who never knew the fullness of life were placed in the tomb, each in a tiny mummy case. If the funeral rites of a society truly offer a ~efiected image what might future generations learn about the times in which we live?
In the Treasury was a second gilded shrine standing on a sled. This was the canopic shrine which contained the internal organs of the king. This elaborate and beautiful sirrine with its protective goddesses has the inescapable air or a hallowed piece of work - even the individual organs were hallowed.
"The value that I calculated for length was extremely close to that.of the one published in Davidson and Aldersmith's book, their value being 1836 inches, and my theoretical value 1833,46 geodetic inches.
A considerable amount of time was required to calculate a satisfactory value for the length of the Gallery. I eventually found that the amount of hollowing-in at the base provided the ,clue. If 57.6 (the amount in inches by which the base is inset) is divided by pi or 3.1415927, the resulting value is 18.334649. The harmonic equivalent of 1833.46 when applied to Gallery length would ensure that the wave-forms set up in the cavity were finely tuned to light frequencies.
A search of my physics books revealed that 1836 was the closest approximation the scientists have calculated to the mass / Page 96 (Diagram 15 omitted) Page 97 / ratio of the positive hydrogen ion, i.e. the proton, to the electron..."
PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey 1977
IS TIME THE TUNNEL FROM HERE TO THERE?
Page 90
"One of the most repeated suggestions heard from sci-entists puzzling over the parallel Universe idea isthat it is another dimension of time.
Can there be a time other than that which we know and govern our lives by?..."
Page 91
"The old Newtonian concept of a Universe of three-dimensional space completely independent of time crumbled before Einstein's Theory of Relativity in the early years of this century. Physics now recognizes a Universe in which space -and time are indissolubly linked. None of us on Earth.
are standing still. We are all moving through space and because we are moving, we are growing old at a less rapid rate than if the Earth were standing still. The astronauts, soaring through space, age less- rapidly than we back on Earth. In other words, the faster one travels, the more time slows down. Everything is relative, and so the basis of / Page 92 / Einstein's theory establishes the fact that space and time are interrelated and woven together-in-extricably.
For example, man looks up to the sky today and sees a star exploding and at the same time-realizes the event took place millions. of years ago and that he is seeing something that actually no longer is in existence. What is he witnessing? The present, or the past? What is happening is the awesome truth that an event of a distant past is taking place in the present. The light from the explosion has required a length of time to reach man's vision that has far exceeded the life of the star matter that emitted the light. Space has affected time. One cannot exist without the other. Time is no longer the traditional concept, an independent factor. It is part and parcel of space. The Uni-verse incorporates a space-time continuum. All of which forces us to review our concepts of time as a single along-one-line-type of .procession. If space is everywhere at once, then. likewise, would not time have the same characteristic? Why should we think it can occur only in a sequence pattern?- Is not this traditional concept a construct of man's own. creation-a division of time into successive moments for practical advantages-a pattern he imposes upon time which time itself does not possess? Clocks record our sense-of time, but they do not make it. Clearly, man has made it. He has determined that a certain interval elapses between events and so he measures it by insu-uments and then pronounces that the present event is now and / Page 93 / all that happened before is the past and all that is yet to occur is the future. Such reasoning is be-ginning to appear a very faulty one.
One of the first men to tell us so was the late English scientist, J. W. Dunne, who designed the first British military plane. Today he is much better known for his revolutionary theories on time.- His work, An Experiment with Time, is a classic in its field.
An aeronautical engineer with a great interest in physics arid mathematics, Dunne became ab-sorbed in the 1930's with Einstein's Theory of Rel-ativity. He set about to construct a theory of time that would fit in with Einstein's relativistic con-cepts. What he came up with-is roughly this: if time is a series that flows forward, then there must be another kind of time (in which it flows) that measures it.
From this thesis he went on to suggest that human beings also have several levels. There is the first "Me" who lives and experiences in this life and then another "Me" who is conscious of the first "Me." Such an awareness becomes manifest whenever one has the thought of "Myself." It is the second and detached "I" or "Me" who exists,. not in time as we know it, but in Time Two. This "Me" is able to look backwards and forward in time.
There is the one "Me," asserted Dunne, who goes through life dully and in a sequence of events, and then 'there is the second "Me" which observes. That second "Me" Dunne called "mind." This / Page 94 / mind - and all other men's minds-are small aspects of a single Universal Mind. -
The first "Me," the passive one, Dunne felt, has a narrow choice of what it can look at-merely the events of its mortal life. The second "Me" or mind is not so restricted. It reflects; it judges and dis-criminates.. It is a broad observer. When we are asleep the second mind is particularly free. It oc-cupies itself glancing at the past and future as well as the present.
It is the second and detached ','Me" who exists-in Time Two and is able to look forward and back- wards in Time, unlike the limited first "Me" which is restricted to mortal time, Time One.
To sum it up, Dunne argued for a four-dimensional "serial" Universe in which the inner or sec-ond "Me," particularly in sleep, is free of the waking restrictions of viewing time from moment to moment in a one-directional flow. It slips into another dimension of space-time awareness which allows that person to travel freely through time either backwards or forward.
According to this theory, time is related to awareness. I myself can testify to experiencing such a stepping.out-of-time (as we know it). In! a broader sense, the traditional sense of time ceased for me. Let me explain..." (explanation omitted)
PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Adi-Kent Thomas Jeffrey 1977
Page 170 (Chapter 12)
THE UNSEEN UNIVERSE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
"In the foregoing chapters we have done a lot of looking at the possibility of an invisible twin Universe, another whole like us, yet different. Proponents call it various terms such as Invisible Universe, Antimatter Universe, Parallel Universe, Fourth Dimension. . . but they all attribute the same characteristics to this unknown unit. It is unmaterial, therefore unseeable by man's eyes or his instruments. It interacts with or interpenetrates our physical universe from time to time, an action known only by reaction. Phenomena inexplicable in scientific terms are occurring, and in these in- / Page 171 / stances, perhaps, we are being notified of the In-visible System's proximity to us.
There is another analysis that we have not dis-cussed in detail. Is this unseen Universe purely a mental state? Are UFO's, Pyramidology, Atmo-spheric Influences and Geographic Influences, De- materialization, etc., all "psychic" construents?
Is the fourth dimension or the great Invisible Universe not a place-either physical or unphysi-cal-but a state of mind? A product of a mortal man's own beliefs about himself and his Universe? An emanation from a subtle repository of material man's thoughts-a universal and collective store-house of suggestions and traditional concepts from which the world's mass mind unconsciously draws and then objectifies?
A typical product of such processing can be seen in the UFO phenomenon. Examined in the light of this "mass mind" one sees a correlation between what is objectified and what is objectifying.
Jacques Vallee, the noted French astrophysicist and UFO investigator, makes this point time and time again: Man has, since the beginning of his days on earth, witnessed unidentified flying ob-jects. UFO's, Vallee asserts, have been seen throughout history and have consistently provided their own explanation within the framework of each culture. In antiquity they were regarded as gods; in medieval times, as magicians; in the nine-teenth century, as scientific geniuses. And, finally, in our own time, as interplanetary travelers. Objectifications from a mortal mass mind?
Page 172
Author and phenomena-investigator John A. Keel would support this theory as he has stated on numerous occasions that he concludes that all paranormal manifestations stem from a common source, no matter what frame of reference they occur within This common source probably is not a tangible, structured technology but a process of thought power. The phenomenon of UFO's illu-strates that this power is able to manipulate the human mind and reality itself to conform to-and support-the beliefs of the witnesses.
Wasn't Dr. Hynek (see Chapter Two) suggest-ing the same thing when he asked, "[Are UFO's] a product of our own minds without our being aware of it?" John White, an editor with Psychic maga-zine, expounds in an article in the February 1976 issue thoughts that arouse and challenge. He con-tends that "These questions bring us slowly but surely to the realization that only by understand-ing the essence of ourselves-the layers of the psyche, including our higher Self and our highest Self-can we understand the nature and structure of the cosmos." And I would add: "and any and all other universes that may exist."
"Where are these higher planes, these hyper-spaces, these other dimensions?" asks White in his summation paragraph. "All sources agree: they are within us, even though they seem to be outside us in physical space; and at the same time, they are indeed out there. . . ." Can these higher dimensions of thought within us affect the physical space outside us?
Page 173
There is mounting evidence that man has the ability through rising concepts in consciousness to overcome physical space dictates even to the ex-tent of bettering his life on earth and his Physical environment as well. When man cleans up the at-mosphere of his mind, many philosophers feel, the Universe will reflect this purified subjective state in clearer skies, fewer storms, tornadoes, earth- quakes, and extremes of heat and cold, With such exalted reasoning we can come to a beautiful conclusion that would have pleased Mark Twain no end. Man, at long' last, is not only talking about the weather, he finds he can do something about it!
The late Oliver Reiser, a philosopher of note, took that theory one step further. There is a kind of exalted transference of thought going on in the Great Whole, he contended. A Supreme Conscious-ness, that is the highest Mind possible which reaches down to humanity-to which humanity in turn reaches up and thus is established the most infinitely, mentally pure Universe possible. And that would be the only true universe there is. Oth-ers could only hint at its perfection.
And so the probe for a greater understanding of our surroundings goes on. In the Christian Science Monitor of June 18, 1975, Robert C. Cowen wrote a piece concerning man's search for life beyond us. He stated:
"There is more than scientific curiosity behind this effort. Many interested scientists believe that mankind faces such awesome problems that it will either destroy itself or find a creative solution that / Page 174 / will amount to the rebirth of civilization. They think that all technological civilizations probably face such a challenge at about our stage of de-velopment. If other worlds are sending messages, they reason, these civilizations probably have sur-mounted this challenge and we might learn from their experience."
Then Cowen concludes his article with the fol-lowing statement:
"The greatest outreach the human race has yet made, an attempt to contact other worlds, is moti-vated partly by a yearning to transcend the prob-lems of 20th-century earth."
In this ultimate transcendence, then, can it not be agreed, man will take his first step out of this world into that other unphysical Universe, wherever it is?"
FROM ATLANTIS TO THE SPHINX
Colin Wilson 1996
The Third Force
Page 321
"The I-Ching, then, may either be regarded as some kind of living entity, or as a kind of ready reckoner which is able to inform the questioner of the exact meaning of the hexagram he has obtained. It is, at aIr events, based upon the notion that there is no such thing as pure chance.
This notion sounds preposterous, but seems to be sup-ported by quantum physics, in which the observer some-how alters the event he is observing. For example, a beam of light shone through a pinhole will cause a small circle of light to appear on a screen (or photographic plate) behind it. If two pinholes are opened side by side, there are two interlinked circles of light, but the portion that overlaps has a number of dark lines, due to the 'interference' of the two beams, which cancel one another out. If the beam is now dimmed, so that only one photon at a time can pass through, you would expect the interference lines to dis-appear when the plate is finally developed, for one photon cannot interfere with another. Yet the interference lines are still there. But if we 'watch' the photons with a photon detector, to find out what is happening at the holes, the interference pattern disappears. . .
Jung seems to be suggesting that, in the same way, our minds affect the patterns of the real world, unconsciously - 'fixing' the results."
CATCHING THE LIGHT
THE ENTWINED HISTORY OF LIGHT AND MIND
Arthur Zajonc 1993
Page 26
The Arab Connection
"Toward the end of the Roman empire the stage was set for further developments in the history of the mind. The closing of the Platonic Academy in A. D. 529 by Justinian was the final death knell of Greek philosophy in the West and the dawn of the Dark Ages. For many centuries, the Academy had been a sanctuary in which the ideas of Plato and his followers flourished. With the rise of Christianity, however, pagan thought was in danger of being eradicated. In A.D. 389, the great library in Alexandria with its half-million scrolls was destroyed by rioting Christians. Under a state that sanctioned the Roman Church, the Platon- ists, who still revered the pagan gods, were persecuted and hounded as dangerous heretics. When Justinian's soldiers swept into the Platonic Academy, the last disciples of Plato had to / Page 27 / flee Athens. The seven great sages of the Academy departed with their precious books bound for Persia where the emperor Khurso I received them graciously at his magnificent summer palace in Jundishapur (near what is today Dizful, Iran).20
In the court of Khurso I, and at the illustrious Academy of Jundishapur, literature, the arts, science, and philosophy flour-ished. The Athenian refugees found here a cosmopolitan at-mosphere of remarkable tolerance. The indigenous religions of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism mingled with eastern religious thought, as well as pagan, Christian, and Jewish influences. Jundishapur was founded as a prisoners' camp following the de-feat of the Roman emperor Valerian in A. D. 260 by Shapur I. By the sixth century it had become the greatest center of learning in the world, boasting an outstanding astronomical observatory, medical school, and the world's first hospital. Jundishapur was known then, and for centuries thereafter, for its physicians and wise counselors. The rise of Islam blunted the impact of Jun-dishapur, but the leaders of Jundishapur's Academy were the nucleus around which the scholarship and learning of Islam formed.
With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, a cultural revolution of unprecedented scope took place on the Arabian peninsula. Following the establishment of the new religion by Mohammed and a system of governance for the vast empire won through holy wars, Islamic scholars became tremendously active in collecting and translating Greek manuscripts. Baghdad, dur- ing the ninth century under the guidance of the scholar and translator Hunayn ibn Ishaq, became a great center of learning, and Arab science and scientists rose quickly in importance. While thinkers in the West forsook the concerns of Hellenism for religious questions, especially the matter of salvation, phi- losophers and physicians of the Islamic Near East, under the influence of Jundishapur, were busy mastering, commenting on, and furthering the knowledge of antiquity"
CATCHING THE LIGHT
THE ENTWINED HISTORY OF LIGHT AND MIND
Arthur Zajonc 1993
THE GIFT OF LIGHT
Page 28
"The famous philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, and op-tician Ibn al-Haytham figured prominently in these develop-ments.21 In his hands, the history of sight took another significant step away from earlier and more spiritual or psychological views and toward a mathematical and physical theory of vision.
Born in Basra (Iraq) in A.D. 965, Ibn al-Haytham, or Alhazen as he came to be known in the West, became the greatest optical scientist of his age. As a child and young man, Alhazen had attempted to attain knowledge of truth through the Islamic re- ligious sciences of his day. Dismayed by the elusiveness of this goal and the rancor he saw between competing religious sects, he resolved to concern himself with a "doctrine whose matter was sensible and whose form was rational. ,,22 Truth was one, he felt, and throughout the following decades he maintained his initial resolve to avoid the vagaries of the spiritual sciences. Instead, he produced dozens of treatises on mathematical and scientific subjects, the most influential of which was his Optics. One hundred and fifty years after his death in 1040, the Optics was translated into Latin and subsequently became the foun- dation for future optical research. Two aspects of his work will be of special concern to us: his replacement of the Platonic theory of vision with his own quite different theory, and his study of the camera obscura. Both reflect Alhazen's reimagin- ation of light.
-
THE PROMINENT GREEK accounts of vision had given full weight to the inner activity of the seer. As we have seen, this came to be embodied in their view that a pure fire, essential to sight, resided within the eye and rayed out, sunlike, to illuminate the world. This view was taught in various forms in the West until the twelfth century, for example by the great teacher William of Conches at the cathedral schools of Chartres and Paris. A profound student of Plato, Conches also drew from Galen the
Page 34
The illuminating interior ray or fire had vanished. Yet Des-cartes still holds a two-stage theory of vision. In the first, light (which he conceived of as material and mechanical) is conveyed through the physical organ of sight to a common sensorium in the body. The mechanical stimuli are then, in Descartes's view, "perceived" by a spiritual principle within man. For Descartes the world of extension, of substance-res extensa-reached all the way into the body but could not of itself complete the process of vision. A spiritual principle, the mind or soul-res cogitans- was still required. Like the philosopher in the illustration ob-serving the flickering retinal images from his dark vantage point, the immaterial mind observed the mechanical proddings of the world in the sensorium.
Although the light of the eye that reached out and granted meaning to raw sensation had retreated from the body, it re- mained in Descartes's dualist position as a disembodied spirit, a vestige of the past. Yet even this faint echo of a Greek heritage was destined for at least temporary extinction.
Modern Sense Physiology
We shall, sooner or later, arrive at a mechanical equivalent of consciousness.