Quest Magazine

The View from Adyar

By Radha Burnier

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Burnier, Radha. "Maturity of the Mind." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

There is a world of difference between a mind which is mature and one which is not. In the fragment entitled "The Seven Portals" in The Voice of the Silence, the following words occur:

Thy Soul has to become as the ripe
mango fruit: as soft and sweet as its
bright golden pulp for others' woes, as
hard as that fruit's stone for thine own
throes and sorrows

The ripening takes place slowly through the experience of many incarnations, or quickly at a certain stage by discovering in what maturity consists.

From the spiritual point of view, maturity is not ability of a worldly kind. Just as the fully ripe mango has no raw portion in it, the mature mind is free of every element of rawness. The word "raw" means, among other things, "untrained." A raw recruit is, for example, an untrained person. The word also means "unhealed," "sore" or "inflamed," as is a wounded area which has not been restored to health. These words help to understand the state of immaturity.

Thoughts and emotions constantly well up in the mind, many or most of them being disorderly reactions to people and circumstances. These reactions are symptoms of the subconscious condition. The insecurity of to people is displayed in numerous ways: Emotions which are easily inflamed, sensitivity to the opinions of others, vainglorious thought, and so on. People who appear strong may in fact be hardening themselves, because they are uncertain and feel the need to protect themselves. Wanting to become hard, strong or clever is a symptom of hidden weakness.

Among the seven virtues described as the keys to "The Seven Portals" in The Voice of the Silence is of others, 'patience sweet, that nought can ruffle.' In the absence of egoism, there is nothing to be offended or disturbed. The mind is like a light which burns steadily, unaffected by outer conditions.

Steadiness, and a real sense of peace, and freedom from wants and fears, are all characteristic of maturity. The true happiness described by Plotinus is also that state of maturity. He says:

The sign that this state has been achieved is that the man seeks nothing else. Once the man is adept, the means of happiness, the way to good, are within, for nothing is good that lies outside him. Anything he desires further than this, he seeks as a necessity, and not for himself but for a subordinate, for the body bound to him, to which since it has life he must minister the needs of life, not needs, however, to the true man.

One who grows in maturity is not quick to offer opinions and come to conclusions. His mind is perceptive and intelligent, but the intelligence itself makes him pause and wait. He does not take it for granted that his opinions are of value and therefore there is obstinacy, assertiveness or pride in him. The first sign of maturity is to recognize one's own limitations, and be humble and simple.

Radha Burnier, President of the international Theosophical Society, is also international head of the Theosophical Order of Service and the author of several books, including Human Regeneration. This column was adapted from The Theosophist 117 (December 1995): 85-86

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: O. Howell, Alice. "In the Beginning Was a Verb." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

By Alice O. Howell

Panta rhea—everything flows.
—Heraclitus

Jungian archetypes have been the subject of a growing confusion over the years. For some the archetype is a primordial image, for others it is a god or a character in a fairy tale, and so forth. All such views are true on different levels, and thus arguments about them represent a dilemma of layers.

The great obstacle in understanding the essence of an archetype is that we have to use words to define what is essentially a direct experience. We cannot even mention a verb without turning it into a noun! To say "swimming is delightful" is to turn the gerund into the subject of the sentence, that is, into a noun; similarly, in "to swim is delightful," the infinitive to swim is the subject of the sentence, a verb having become a noun. All our hows turn into linguistic whats. A mercurial trickster stops the flow of the action as though action were frames in a reel of film. So to write of archetypes is at best a challenge.

"In the beginning was a verb" is simply a paraphrase of the words of John: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God." The word verb means "word." This is so obvious, it takes a simpleton like myself to get the joke. If we say that God is a verb, we are on the right track to understanding the essence of an archetype because the essential nature of archetypes is a process, a verb. And postulating energy (God), for lack of a better word, as the Primal Verb, then the archetypes become the various modalities inherent in both the invisible and the visible worlds. Jung refers in one of his letters (to Dr. H., August 30, 1951) to the essentially transcendental nature of the archetype as an "arranger" of psychic forms inside and outside the psyche (in theoretical physics the archetype corresponds to the model of a radioactive atom, with the difference that the atom consists of quantitative, and the archetype of qualitative, i.e. meaningful, relationships . . .).

To use a much simpler but similar process, imagine energy as the sugar in a cosmic pastry-baker's frosting sack with different templates for making stars, swirls, spirals, and so on. The substance is the same but the forms differ. Jung also uses a far more effective example tracing how an archetype, as an invisible modulator of energy, becomes visible (letter to Pastor Max Frischkenecht, February 8, 1946):

In order to clarify this somewhat difficult concept, I would like to take a parallel from mineralogy, the so-called crystal lattice. This lattice represents the axial system of the crystal. In the mother liquor it is invisible, as though not present, and yet it is present since first the ions aggregate round the (ideal) axial points of intersection, and then the molecules. There is only one crystal lattice for millions of crystals of the same chemical composition. No individual crystal can speak of its lattice, since the lattice is the identical precondition for all of them (none of which concretizes it perfectly!). It is everywhere the same and eternal.

To help resolve the dilemma of layers, we can refocus from the transcendental and eternal aspect of the archetype, which Jung wrote of in the passages just quoted, to the next layer, that of the "primordial image," which is still an abstraction. We must assume that prehistoric humanity observed these archetypal expressions in nature and, deeming them to be universal, considered them pine: light, darkness; expansion, contraction; penetration, reception, and so on—and, in order to speak of them, gave them names of gods and goddesses. So the second layer of perception of an archetype would lie in its personification, to wit, the Greek deities Chaos, Erebus, Hemera, Zeus, Kronos, Ares, and the rest. There can be no argument against this because, though the gods and goddesses in different cultures bear a variety of names in different languages, the associated process of each has remained a constant throughout history. Jung also writes:

Archetypes are forms of different aspects expressing the creative psychic background. They are and always have been numinous and therefore "pine." In a very generalizing way we can therefore define them as aspects of the Creator.

The next layer is the external projection and concretization of these personifications in statues and temples with rituals and taboos. Rules and regulations develop into religious institutions with a priesthood, and alas eventually the true nature of the archetype is in danger of being lost until, with the changing of the ages, the husk of one religion is destroyed and a new expression arises with the same archetypal components. You cannot kill an archetype! If we could only grasp this, we might be able to stop killing each other in the name of religion. And it is the perception of these archetypes that could form a common denominator for mutual tolerance. This also may explain the efficacy of certain shamanic, nomadic, or mystical practices because they tap directly into the primordial layer of archetypes, thereby avoiding reification in institutions.

Yet another layer is the hiding of archetypes as symbols in myths, fairy tales, plays, books, movies, and even down to the comic strips we enjoy every day. And it pays to remember that each process has both a positive and negative expression. Internally, our most cruel critic can be transformed into the Wise Old Man because they represent the same process. The sweet young ingenue is the positive aspect of the bitch; the good mother, of the witch; and the mortal hero, of the villain.

All of the anthropocentric factors listed above can be seen as human projections of therefore define contents of the human psyche, and this insight is one of the great contributions thatJung has offered us because "it takes one to know one," and within ourselves we resonate with the awesome archetypal flow of the mystery we know as the cosmos (a word meaning beauty). Thus the archetypal process unites our inner and outer worlds, providing an opportunity for the ego to make the process conscious and meaningful. This uniting also accounts for synchronicities and may explain why astrology works. When the processes unite, there is a flashing glimpse of the unus mundus—the "One World."

Agrippa von Nettesheim, the alchemist, wrote, Virtutes pinae in res diffusae—"Divine powers are hidden in things." This reflects the insight that not a single object, either manifest in nature or manufactured by human hands, can exist without concealing archetypal processes. Thus it can be truly said that we can also find the sacred in the commonplace and so, by uncovering or discovering it, we can begin to appreciate the wondrous differentiation of the primal energy at the source of all manifestation. Nader Ardalan and Lelah Bhaktiar, writing in The Sense of Unity: The Sufi Tradition in Persian Architecture, express this beautifully from a Sufi viewpoint:

Symbols themselves are theophanies of the absolute in the relative. . . . The central postulate of the Way is that there is a hidden meaning in all things. Every thing has an outer as well as an inner meaning. Every external form is complemented by an inner reality which is its hidden eternal essence.

Another alchemist, Petrus Bonus ("good stone") wrote that to discover the Philosopher's Stone meant "looking with the eyes and seeing with the heart," which would mean viewing the world with a loving eye. When we do this, we begin to learn how to enter the unus mundus—the one world that is the dwelling of the Self or our Divine Guest. As outer and inner become one, life can become both more meaningful and sacramental. As Jesus says in the Gospel according to Thomas, "Heaven is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it." Or as someone has observed, "There is another world, and it's hidden in this one!" Alchemy has an extensive list of processes designated by high-sounding Latin verbs. But those processes are applied over and over unconsciously by any cook in any kitchen! Try Sublimatio Souffle or Scrambled eggs Coagulatio!

The key lies in our ability to think symbolically. The Greek verb symbolein means "to throw together" or "to unite." The symbol unites an outer and visible thing or event with an inner and spiritual meaning. (The antonym diabolein means "to separate" and is the origin of diabolos or devil! But that's another story.)

Taking God as a verb, the process we most clearly associate with this central mystery surely is creating. All myths universally start with some form of creation. So, out of darkness and chaos emerge light, life, and warmth. The "primordial image" is an abstraction that is pine. The next step is naming an unmanifest God of gods, next a manifest god or goddess. Keep in mind, these are still abstractions of verbs! The primal processes require a father (yang) god and a mother (yin) goddess, because only the process of mothering can give form to life, and the word matter comes from mater "mother."

The source of life and light in our solar system is the sun. The planets with their moons orbit the sun. So symbolically, for early mankind the Sun was a symbol of God, the Creator, and the gods and goddesses were reflections or attributes of that primal source of Spirit. A modern five-year-old little girl, Tamar, said, "I close my eyes when I talk to God because God is like a great big sun (Ruth Seligman and Jonathan Mark, When Will the Lord Be Two?). That is the way an Egyptian would have addressed the god Ra three thousand years ago.

From the sun as an archetypal expression of the creative force, we pass to yet another layer—the number of religions using solar light or fire as symbols in their rituals and building their temples or churches to provide a sacred space or temenos to honor the Source. Fire is the element that multiplies; it can be shared over and over without losing its light.

Similarly, one seed when grown produces hundreds more. One work of art becomes as many as there are people to see it, because no two people react to it exactly the same. One lecture becomes a hundred lectures, if a hundred people are present. It is not what is said but what is heard; not what is written but what is read. So subtly we can observe the archetypal how of "creating" moving through all the whats.

Turning inward within the psyche, we find that every esoteric branch of every exoteric religion postulates an inner Light (Atman or Christ Within), which Jung termed the Self (as opposed to the ego). This Self is the center point of the symbolic circle or mandala of the psyche. Thus the same symbol,    is used in astronomy for the sun and in metallurgy for gold. The ego (who we think we are) is symbolically at the circumference, mediating between outer and inner realities and circumambulating the centerpoint of the Self (who we really are).

Accordingly, in myths and fairy tales, the figure of central authority is the king; in a tribe,the chief; in a democracy, the president; in a business, the boss. Fairy tales involving a throne usurped by a wrongful ruler to the detriment of the land describe the fairly common problem of our placing on the throne our ego instead of our Divine Guest. In a family, the father expresses that archetype. Fathers give life; mothers give the form life takes. Now, as we enter a new eon, the central archetype may be heading for the hierogamos or "sacred wedding." We are heading toward "the Woman clothed with the Sun" of Revelations. Anyone reading and reacting to this politically has fallen into the trap of literalism and forgotten the fundamental verbs. Only a fertilized egg yields a new life. It still takes two to tango in the manifest world.

In science, we learn that every atom has a "sun." Thus everything in nature, from animal through vegetable to mineral, is an expression of the primal verb of creating. When we read that man is made in the image of God, we can rethink that statement in terms of our sharing the ability to co-create (which is a process), rather than taking it literally and projecting an anthropomorphic god. To think symbolically is a key to wisdom because it allows us to see the same process moving at different levels, like octaves in music.

An amusing example: what common object makes one out of two going up (symbolos) and two out of one going down (diabolos)? The answer is a zipper! We can recognize the same process in the caduceus of Hermes (Mercury), the personification of communicating, or in the ida and pingala of the chakra system, or in the switcherooing process of our optic nerves, or in our DNA and RNA. When Hermes connects, he is the psychopomp; and when he disconnects or confuses, we call him the Trickster. These are positive and negative aspects of the same process.

A joyful approach to life is playing "Sophia's Game." Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, originally the term for the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, and described as the personification ofWisdom in the Old Testament, is a delightful archetype:

The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
          Before his works of old.
I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning,
          Ere ever the earth was. . . .
When he established the heavens, I was there . . .
When he marked out the foundations of the earth
          I was by him, as a master workman
And I was daily his delight,
          Rejoicing always before him,
          Rejoicing in his habitable earth;
And my delight was with the sons of men.

Proverbs (8:22-31)

Sophia is co-creator of the manifest world, but language, the Trickster, obscured her when Greek Hagia Sophia was translated into Latin as Spiritus Sanctus, which term requires a masculine pronoun. Thus the Christian triune Godhead became all male to the historic detriment of women and nature in Western civilization.

Sophia is also an archetype who takes refuge in fairy tales. Another term for the Holy Ghost is the Paraclete—Greek for "Comforter." It is not difficult to spot her presence at this level as theFairy Godmother, whose benevolent process is mediating between the invisible and visible worlds with practical and helpful advice. Thus Sophia is the process within each of us that we call intuition. Her motto is ego coniungo—"I unite." And, as we will be hearing more and more about her, we need to remember this: Sophia is non-threatening.

Take a cup. What do cups do? They contain, fill and empty, so the hidden process is receptive, yin,womblike, feminine. Symbolically, it usually appears as a cauldron in myths, but these days Sophia's process is honored on the Sabbath as a chalice or the Judaic Sabbath cup. All three are vehicles for rebirth and renewal. Raised another level, Sophia's cup becomes the central problem of a great western myth, the Holy Grail. The problem: it's lost! What have we lost? The feminine approach to wisdom. A philosopher is a lover (philo) of Sophia. When this archetype is raised to its highest expression, we reach the Mother Goddess, who even in prehistoric times was fashioned in clay holding the moon (the Venus of Willendorf, about 25,000 BC) or covered with engraved birds and beasts—an early personification of the process of giving form to life. A child announced that Mother Nature is God's wife!

This way of symbolic thinking is not taught, yet it is hinted at in the Emerald Tablet of HermesTrismegistus: "As above, so below." We need only add, "As within, so without."

In the end we will discover the verb—panta rhea.

Alice O. Howell is a Jungian and an astrologer, whose books include The Dove in the Stone:Finding the Sacred in the Commonplace, Jungian Synchronicity in Astrological Signs and Ages, Stars,Cycles, and Psyche: Psychological Aspects of Astrology, The Web in the Sea: Jung, Sophia, and theGeometry of the Soul (all Quest Books), and her most recent, a delightful fantasy, The Beejum Book, reviewed in the November-December 2002 Quest.

VOLUME 91, NUMBER 3

Contents

The Game of Life
By Betty Bland

Maturity of the Mind
By Radha Burnier

The Egyptian Secret
By William G. Stewart, II

The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Tour
By Joann S. Bakula

In the Beginning Was a Verb
By Alice O. Howell

Originally printed in the May - June 2003 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Stewart, William G. "The Egyptian Secret." Quest  91.3 (MAY - JUNE 2003):

By William G. Stewart, II

Darkness. Deep in the stone mountain, in the tomb of the pharaoh Tuthmosis III, the sun does not penetrate; there is no natural light of any kind, day or night. Yet on the tomb wall of this king who died about 1425 B.C., someone has painted an elaborate mosaic of fantastic creatures and men that seems to tell a story. A story about what? A story to be read by whom in this utter darkness?

THE BOOK OF WHAT IS IN THE DUAT

Today we know this mysterious painting as The Book of What Is in the Duat or the Amduat. It appears in other royal Egyptian tombs and is part of a great body of tomb "writings"that date back a thousand years or more before Tuthmosis III. Along with works like the more familiar Book of the Dead, this is the oldest known religious literature on earth. The Amduat made its appearance in the United States as part of the exhibit "The Quest for Immortality: Treasures of Ancient Egypt,"which toured the country in 2002.

The word Duat is usually translated as "afterlife"or "netherworld,"that is, a realm beyond earthly life. The most common belief is that the paintings offered spiritual instruction to the soul of the dead king as it rose from the coffin.

The mural is divided into twelve panels that represent the hours of the sun's passage. Each panel is further divided into three or four rows of figures. Before the panels begin, there is a text in hieroglyphs that seems to explain what the painting is about. The meaning of this text is not wholly clear, but it refers to the painting as a manual of spiritual instruction.

Each "hour"is a very complex tableau jammed with figures representing the Egyptian gods. According to John Anthony West and others, these gods were manifestations or aspects of the one great and supreme God, Re (usually pronounced "Rah"), who created the universe. This concept may have been held by all early Egyptians or only by the priests and those initiated fully into the religion.

The Egyptians depicted each of the gods with a unique symbol. Sometimes a particular animal was chosen to represent a god. Re was depicted not only as a human figure, but also as the sun disc or as an eye. He was said to be self-created, all-powerful, supreme, One.

No one has fully decoded this fabulous painting. Many traditional Egyptologists, such as those who designed "The Quest for Immortality"exhibit, believe that the Egyptians worshiped the sun literally and that the Amduat represents the sun's nightly journey through the underworld. The interpretation made here is of an altogether different kind.

The text accompanying the painting reveals that it was meant to be mysterious even to the Egyptians themselves. At the end of the first hour, the writing declares, "This is the plan like the one drawn by the god himself. It is useful for him who is on earth. Very correct like their mysterious representations in painting"(Alexandre Piankoff's translation in West's Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt, used throughout this article). Although the painting is mysterious, it can be interpreted in ways familiar to a present-day viewer—for one who is now on earth.

THE LIGHT OF THE SUN

Marine Sergeant Steven Price, 23 years old and critically wounded, lay on a stretcher waiting to be taken into the operating room. He says that he became "totally detached"from his body and floated up near the ceiling. He turned toward the brick wall, which suddenly became a light. "The light was there and it had come to get me. The light is the brightest thing you have ever seen, yet it's not penetrating in any way. I can't describe the light. . . . It is a mother cradling her baby with love, only a million times more than that and that is all of the love there is"(as reported by Gerald Renner).

Sgt. Price's report is of a near-death experience or NDE, as it has come to be called. Such experiences are common in all cultures, and at least eight million Americans have had one. Reports often include going through a tunnel and meeting the light. Some who have had the experience report seeing suddenly what looks like the night sky filled with stars, and they realize the stars are souls. They may meet a dead friend or relative. They want to stay, but are told that they must return. Generally, when they do return, they are more spiritual and compassionate and are free from all fear of death. Price says: "You don't know what it is to live until you're not afraid to die."

When Price talks about the light, his eyes fill with tears: "It took me 20 years to be able to call the light God."The light did not identify itself as "God" or "Jesus" or "Buddha" or any other name, nor as male or female. He simply experienced it as overwhelming love.

Did the ancient Egyptians know about the light encountered in near-death experiences? Because the experience is so common in all cultures, it would be surprising if they did not. They certainly adopted the sun as their symbol for the creator god, Re, and they sometimes referred to souls becoming stars after death. It would thus have been natural for them to use the day's journey of the sun as a metaphor for the spiritual journey of the soul.

THE CANOPY OF FLESH

The central figure in the Amduat drama is Re—but the figure of Re is depicted as enclosed within a tabernacle or canopy. For the Egyptians a canopy symbolized the flesh, so the painting shows God incarnate in the flesh, that is, as a person.

In the city of Babylon, 900 years after the death of Tuthmosis III, a young Israelite priest named Ezekiel spoke of a strange experience. He said he was taken by the Spirit of God to a valley full of bones, where he was told to speak to the dry bones—to tell them that God was going to restore them to life. God explained to Ezekiel that the bones were the people of Israel, who had lost all hope. Ezekiel was directed to tell these people: "And I will put my Spirit within you, and you shall live."

More than 600 years later, a man named Paul, the disciple of another Hebrew prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, wrote to one of the new communities of the religion that was then called "the Way"and later "Christianity": "Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?"(1 Cor. 3.16). And in the Svetasvatara Upanishad of ancient India, an anonymous sage wrote: "There is a Spirit who is hidden in all things, as cream is hidden in milk and who is the source of self-knowledge and self-sacrifice. This is Brahman, the Spirit Supreme."

The belief that God's Spirit dwells in the human being pervades the sacred texts of many great faiths. And the writers of those sacred texts believed, with the prophet Ezekiel, that without that Spirit active in human beings, they are no more than dead things, a heap of dried up bones on a desert floor. That was also the belief of those who painted the walls of the tomb of Tuthmosis III. Re was depicted within the canopy of the flesh. God is within the human being. Not only in the Amduat but in other texts as well, the Egyptians referred to "god who is in man"(Hornung).

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL: THE FIRST LIFE

The figure of Re-within-the-Canopy is borne on a boat, surrounded by various gods. In the first hour, the boat is launched as the beginning of the First Life in the spiritual journey.

Whenever a person accepts a relationship with God, even if hesitantly and with confusion and doubt, the First Life begins. The purpose of the First Life is to build a strong relationship of love and trust between the human and God. At the beginning (especially if it happens in adulthood), there may be very dramatic bonding experiences—like falling in love. But eventually these "tingling"experiences fall away and the hard work of relationship must take over. Slowly, clumsily, the human tries to redirect his or her life toward the ways of God, as they are dimly perceived. Communion takes place in personal prayer (simple talking with God, as with a friend), meditation, and the reading of sacred works, and perhaps participation in some religious community.

As Walter Hilton, a fourteenth-century English mystic, describes this laborious struggle, we are like wrestlers: one moment we are on top and in command of our nature, and in the next moment that nature is on top and master of us. We fight not only our own nature but the surrounding world—including the religious world—that is constantly trying to win us over or throwing obstacles in the path of our relationship with God and true spiritual progress. But we know that God is present, and we begin to see his activity in our life.

As the relationship matures, we suddenly find ourselves wanting simply to be alone with God. In a way, it is like falling in love again, but much quieter. There are no fireworks, just a desperate longing to be alone, in silence, with this God we now love deeply. Religious services and ceremonies and much talking can be excruciatingly painful and disturbing. They are in the way now, whereas once they might have been helpful.

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL: THE HOURS OF DARKNESS

Suddenly in the third hour of the Amduat, figures of destruction appear. The hour itself is titled "She Who Cuts Up the Souls."The text reads: "This is what they do in the West: roast and hack to pieces the souls, imprison the shadows, annihilate those who are not, who belong to this Place of Destruction."Everywhere there are symbols of Osiris, who is Re-within-the-Canopy, or God embodied, and whose story is the central myth of Egypt. The hieroglyph for Osiris was a combination of eye and throne—in other words, God and royalty (or perhaps God and humanity).

In the myth of Osiris, the good god was tricked and betrayed by his wicked brother, Set, who murdered Osiris and cut his body into fourteen pieces, which he scattered throughout the country. But Osiris's wife, Isis, searched for the pieces and gathered them all together again. Miraculously, she reconstructed the body of Osiris, but not his life. Yet Isis had intercourse with the dead Osiris, became pregnant, and gave birth to Horus, a sun god. When Horus grew to manhood, he defeated Set, who is similar to Satan, a Hebrew name meaning "adversary,"just as Set represents the opposition force to God, Re.

Having one's body "hacked to pieces"would be bad enough. But things get even worse for Osiris. In the fourth hour, he descends to the bottom, the pit, in darkness. It is the end. Set appears prominently in the top register of the panel. The text emphasizes that it is "mysterious"and the meaning "hidden."But within this "thick darkness,"a new life appears—Khepri, symbolized by the scarab beetle, who represents process and transformation. In the fifth hour, Khepri, assisted by the other gods, pulls the boat out of the depths of the earth by a towrope. The text celebrates a new life, the beginning of the return journey to the light. It declares: "In peace, in peace! Lord of Life! In peace. Thou peace of the West! In peace, thou opener of the earth. In peace, thou cleaver of the ground. In peace, thou who art in heaven. . . . Heaven is in peace, in peace! Re is bound for the beautiful West."

What is happening in these hours? In the spiritual journey of the soul, just when we feel most secure in our relationship with God, without warning, everything turns dark. It may begin with some life catastrophe"loss of a key relationship, career failure, illness, or many catastrophes all at once. All is dark. We feel abandoned and unwanted by God, betrayed. We begin to experience being stripped of everything that had supported us, even good and beautiful things. Nothing matters to us anymore. This is a spiritual experience that John of the Cross called the Dark Night of the Senses. Others call it just "the darkness."We feel we have been delivered into the hands of Satan, the enemy of God and all goodness.

The old life, and the spiritual person, is being put to death. It is like the experience in shamanistic societies of the call to the healer. The shaman goes through a terrible death-like trial and emerges from it as a virtually new, reborn person—a healer. Walter Hilton calls it the gate through which all must pass to attain holiness. Teresa of Avila says of it: "The grief that is felt here is not like that of this world . . . such grief doesn't reach the intimate depths of our being as does the pain suffered in this state, for it seems that the pain breaks and grinds the soul into pieces."

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL: AFTER THE DARKNESS

After the fifth hour, images of weaving and of preparing a cocoon appear. Isis tows the boat of Re-within-the-Canopy solely by her magical words—it is no longer hauled laboriously. In the seventh hour, the Great God speaks to Osiris: "Thou art a soul, thy soul is made spirit on earth."The image of Horus appears. In the eighth hour, references are made to the "hidden forms of Horus, the heir to Osiris."

All the subsequent hours are filled with images of metamorphosis, transformation, and the spiritual rising out of the material. Horus pleads with the lost souls, "the drowned ones, the overturned ones, those who float stretched out on their backs, who are in the Abyss."

When the "death"of the Dark Night is completed (a process that can take years), we emerge gently, as if by a miracle, into the sunshine of the other side. We are as if new persons, in a new life, the Second Life. In this life, now stripped of so much worldly human baggage—especially our own ego—we draw ever nearer to God at a very deep, profound level of our soul. Now the struggle is less. Things progress as if by magic. The action of the Holy Spirit within us transforms everything in our soul. We are beginning to be liberated humans. As the Katha Upanishad expresses it: "When the five senses and the mind are still, and reason itself rests in silence, then begins the Path supreme." We begin to understand and live the words of Walter Hilton: "I am nothing; I have nothing; I want only one thing."What is that one thing?

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL: THE FINAL HOURS

In the final hours, Horus becomes celestial. He destroys the enemies of his father, Osiris (the principles of darkness). The last hour is one of triumph. The gods rejoice and cheer. A mummy is tossed aside, "the mysterious form of Horus in complete darkness."It is a painting of liberation.

When the advanced interior change reaches a critical point, we enter the second Dark Night: The Dark Night of the Spirit. John of the Cross describes this as the reformation of our soul at its deepest level. Everything we thought of as "God"is taken away as falsehood, and we discover God as he truly is, unlike anything we could have expected. All of our own falsehood is healed. We then experience what the mystics call "union with God."We are so totally united with God that the two beings are one. Teresa of Avila says it is like rainwater that has fallen into a river—the two things once distinguishable have become one thing, the river. John of the Cross writes: "So great a union is caused that all the things of both God and the soul become one in participant transformation, and the soul appears to be God more than a soul. Indeed, it is God by participation."The Katha Upanishad summarizes it this way: "When all desires that cling to the heart are surrendered, then a mortal becomes immortal, and even in this world he is one with Brahman."

This is the true liberation, healing, and salvation. It is what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom of God, which he said was "within"(Stewart). It begins the Third Life, the life of holiness. The human now is the master of his or her nature and becomes a pure channel for God's Spirit to flow into the world as love, healing, beauty, and truth.

WHAT IS IN THE DUAT?

Now we can understand the Osiris myth. Osiris represents the human of the First Life, who is destroyed by Set in the Dark Night and who is reborn miraculously as a semi-pine human, Horus, in the Second Life. In the end, Set is defeated in the Dark Night of the Spirit, and the human becomes pine and reigns with God, the beloved Father.

The Duat is this life, not the afterlife or other world. From the pine perspective, this life is the underworld, the place where the transformation from natural human to pine human takes place. And the amazing thing is that at least some ancient Egyptians knew this Way long before the Bible was written and before Jesus taught the Kingdom of God in Palestine.

Was this chart of the Way placed in the king's tomb to instruct him as he rose from the dead in the pitch darkness? Of course not. The king already knew the text intimately and would have known that the text would be placed on the walls of his tomb, just as the Egyptian kings planned during their life for every detail of their own tombs. Furthermore, the Egyptians, from tomb robbers to priestly tomb inspectors, knew that they would not encounter any risen spirit reading texts in the king's tomb. It was not a description of the sun's nightly journey with the pharaoh tagging along. It was, rather, a statement of ultimate belief.

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