5
Further Light
The phenomenon of light is celebrated in all of the major religions. If you read your Bible, Koran, or Upanishads, you will see that it is always spoken of in glowing terms.
In Autobiography of a Yogi, Yogananda quotes freely from the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures to emphasize the importance of light with respect to mankind’s innate spiritual quest. He notes, for example, that God’s very first command was, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3). He also quotes from Matthew 6:22, a verse that runs close to Jahn and Dunne’s idea of consciousness operating in tune with the wavelike nature of reality: “The light of the body is in the eye. If, therefore, thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
In the Koran, in the chapter entitled “Light,” Muhammad uses the term to describe the creative power of Allah: “Allah is the light of the heavens and the earth. . . . Light upon light, Allah guideth unto His Light whom He will.”
Similarly, in ancient Persia the principal god, Ahura Mazda, was associated specifically with light. It is said that when the prophet Zoroaster achieved enlightenment, it was through the agency of a spirit that led him to the formless light of the creator. The alchemical element fire was so sacred to the Zoroastrians because at night it was a continuous source of the creative light of Ahura Mazda.
In early Greece, the sun and its light were revered in the form of the gods Helios and Apollo. According to myth, Helios, father of the hero Phaeton, had the ability to “see all things” and was enthroned amid rainbows (light) and the hours, attended by the four seasons. An almost identical description of this all-seeing creator is to be found in Revelation, where St. John depicts God sitting on his throne in heaven, encircled by the colors of the rainbow (“seven lamps of fire,” Revelation 4:5).
The traditional idea of a sun-king is an important one, appearing in cultures all around the world. In ancient Egypt, a pharaoh’s name often ended in the suffix Re or Ra (“sun”) to indicate his divine status, as in Menkaura (Greek Mycerinus), alleged builder of the third Pyramid of Giza.
Similarly, in Central and South America, Aztec, Inca, and Maya legends all speak of an ancient god, a cosmic creator who appeared from the eastern sea soon after a major catastrophe had obscured the sun. Known by various names—Kontiki, Viracocha, Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl—this god is said to have brought back the sun and its light, and with it civilization and a new way of being.
This ancient theme of light after darkness is the key to virtually all midwinter festivals in the northern hemisphere. Like the Zoroastrians, the peoples of Bronze Age Europe used fire burning through the night to invoke the return of the sun, its warmth, and its light.
In numerous other long-standing traditions, teachers, priests, and shamans have consistently attributed to the sun and its light, or the stars and their light, divine or supernatural significance. The Egyptian priest-astronomers, however, were the first to place the sun (Ra) at the center of a cosmological belief system. Now this, I would suggest, was not simply an abstract notion of giving thanks and praise to the giver of life. Nor was it just the sun itself that was of prime importance, but rather its light. The Great Pyramid was known to the early Egyptians as Khuti, “The Lights,” not only because of the dazzling reflective properties of its original, highly polished casing of white tura limestone, but because light itself was the key to their entire system of belief. This is an important and until now unrecognized feature of Egyptian metaphysics, and it represents something of a departure from recent suggestions that the Egyptian religion was either a “star cult” or a “sun cult.” In reality, it was neither and it was both, the common feature being light itself, which is emitted by all stars. In later dynasties, major temples were carefully constructed along axes aligned with the first rays of the rising sun on specific solstices or equinoxes, a particularly striking example of which is the Temple of the Sun—Ammon Ra—at Karnak. Ammon, or Amun, the “Hidden One,” was said to be the power behind the sun (that is, its light) that keeps the balance of life and creation in the universe.
Given the fact that the sun is the dominant star in our sky, it seems perfectly natural that early man should have revered it in one form or another. But the Egyptian worldview, that mankind’s future “spiritual” evolution is in some way connected with the starry world, the sun included, was not simply idol worship based on blind faith or primitive superstition. On the contrary, it was a carefully thought out scientific theory, the theory of transcendental evolution, that holds that life, or consciousness, has the potential to evolve, through the systematic application of the principles of the Hermetic Code, into higher states of being, into cosmic scales of awareness.
The ancient Egyptians, I believe, saw consciousness, or “spirituality,” like everything else, as a form of resonance operating over a whole range of hermetically related frequencies. So the more harmonious the mind becomes, the finer and more penetrating are the frequencies at which it operates and therefore the higher the scale of its psychological or spiritual existence. And, to the Egyptians of the early dynasties, this “higher scale,” as we have previously noted in the astronomical alignments of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, seems to have been closely associated with the stars, with Orion’s Belt, with Sirius, the constellation of Leo, and in fact every other major constellation in the great wheel of precession, whose immensely long cycle, as we noted in a previous chapter, is encoded in some of mankind’s most ancient myths.
In this way we can see that the Giza necropolis is not simply an old, worn-out signpost showing the way to Tombstone. It is, in effect, a giant cosmic pointer, one that naturally directs the attention of all contemplating its mysteries skyward, toward the higher, stellar scale of existence. More than that, incorporated within the dimensions of the Great Pyramid is the sophisticated mathematical relationship known as pi, which is first and foremost an expression of the Hermetic Code, the code by which all evolution proceeds, from DNA upward, to the conscious mind of mankind—and beyond. And then, significantly, we have the old Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid: Khuti, “The Lights.” In my view we are being told here, in clear and precise terms, that the vehicle by which consciousness can transcend onto this higher scale is none other than light itself. Light and consciousness, in other words, are complementary aspects of the ongoing evolutionary process of creating higher and more sophisticated forms of “life.”
We can describe such a process very easily in musical or hermetic terms. We know that there are seven fundamental notes in an octave— Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti—and that there are seven fundamental color frequencies in the spectrum of light: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The eighth note, Do, of an octave is a repeat, at a higher pitch or frequency, of the first base note, also Do. Being in turn the first base note of the next evolving octave, this eighth note automatically becomes the medium through which the impetus created by the given series of notes transcends onto the scale above. In the same way, the eighth “note” in the visible scale of the electromagnetic spectrum—white light, Yogananda’s “creative rays”—can also be envisaged as having transcendental properties, being the medium through which evolutionary consciousness can move on to a higher scale and so realize its optimum potential. Thus we might say that this quantum leap, from the line of time, the fourth dimension, to the plane of light, the fifth dimension, represents one fundamental octave of evolution, the magical transition from the lower Darwinian scale of existence up into the infinitely higher scale, the home of the mythical gods of the Egyptian pantheon.
The rather startling implication is that the ancients’ vision of an eternal sphere—“heaven,” or the starry world—and the nonlocal plane of light described by today’s physicists, are each referring to one and the same level of reality. In other words, the mysterious quantum universe in which light exists, with its infinite web of instantaneous information highways and its zero dimensionality, has been “seen” at first hand and subsequently described by the priesthood of a civilization that existed five thousand years ago.
Obviously this is a personal and somewhat speculative interpretation of the religion of the Egyptians. I’m out on a limb, so to speak. But years of reflecting on the overall effect of Egyptian metaphysics on the human race, on the way it has permeated through to every major religion in history and even, as we have seen, into the disciplined mind of the modern scientist, has convinced me that the orthodox view of this ancient culture is unjustifiably restricted and ungenerous. These people, I believe, knew as much about life, the human psyche, and the universe at large as we do now. I would go even further and suggest that they may have understood a great deal more, albeit in a different way. Clearly there were men of unparalleled genius living back then in Egypt. We have unquestionable proof of this: we have the Great Pyramid, “The Lights,” the greatest and most complex building ever constructed in stone, we have the detailed precessional data encoded in their myths and, perhaps most importantly, we have the Hermetic Code, the “theory of everything.”
Having established that the Egyptian religion was, in fact, a theory of evolution, we can go beyond theory and look for a practical application of the principles involved. To do this, we need to focus on what is known as the “pyramid ritual.” According to Bauval and Gilbert, this was the initiation ceremony conducted inside the Great Pyramid that was designed to assist the soul of the dead pharaoh on its transcendental journey to the stars.
Basically, they believe that it involved two ceremonies. The first of these took place in the Queen’s Chamber, whose southern shaft is now believed to have been targeted on Sirius—the star of the goddess Isis—as it culminated at the meridian in 2550 BCE. Here the son of the dead pharaoh traditionally performed a ritual called “opening the mouth.” This was carried out with an implement made of meteoric iron—the sacred adze—that was used to pierce the embalmed mouth of the mummy, an act that was supposed to restore new life to the pharaoh. After this, the second ceremony was performed in the King’s Chamber, whereby the soul of the pharaoh, now charged with a new kind of life force, was freed to fly up the southern shaft, which Bauval suggests was originally targeted on Zeta Orionis, the star of Osiris.
On first impression one might think that these two rituals, however broad and imaginative in concept, served no practical purpose whatsoever, being merely an embellishment of an abstract notion of a life after death. But in my view this whole ceremony was merely an exemplar and as such was not designed exclusively for the liberation of the soul of one dead pharaoh. The ritual was for all initiates and could be performed by anyone virtually anywhere, with or without a Great Pyramid. It is a detailed description of a simple but highly effective alchemical “trick” performed by the creative mind, whereby consciousness is put first into a fundamentally passive mode, symbolized by the feminine aspect of universal creation, the goddess Isis. This does not mean a mind that is idly passive, like one absorbed in, say, watching television, but one that is consciously and actively receptive—a passive force in tune with the greater cosmos, as opposed to an empty receptacle soaking up images from a screen. A mind properly controlled in this way automatically becomes a fertile place in which new perceptions, new concepts, can germinate and come to fruition. The entirely new, active mode of thought engendered in this process is symbolized in Egyptian ritual by the transcendental journey made by the soul to the home of the god Osiris. This simply represents a new level of consciousness, a higher degree of cosmic awareness. Intuition, one suspects, is one of its manifestations.
So the pyramid ritual is a symbolic description of the process of transcendental evolution, the process by which the human mind ascends to a higher scale of existence in an essentially musically structured universe. This, I believe, is the key message of the Egyptian mysteries, and it is precisely this same idea that lies at the root of the world’s major religions, all of which were set in motion by men who fully understood, and lived by, the principle of psychological harmony. This is why they repeatedly emphasized the importance of composing the mind in a certain way, through meditation, contemplation, prayer that ends in a silent gesture of submission, or whatever. These exercises were designed to create a state in which the mind is open—like the pharaoh’s mouth—and so receptive to greater cosmic forces. And what are these forces? Well, according to such as the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the yogis of India, these forces are, in fact, electromagnetic.
The vehicle of all our visual impressions is, of course, light itself. A passive mind with a visual cortex focused on its environment absorbs light quanta by the billion. This is normal; it is what our retinas are designed to do. But possibly a mind operating not at an ordinary level of awareness but in a state of “optimum psychological resonance” might be capable not only of absorbing external stimuli—light quanta, impressions, and so on—but also of assimilating them in a vastly more productive and effective way than is normally possible. This, I would suggest, is the true basis of medieval alchemy, a kind of “biometaphysical” assimilation of impressions, whereby a balanced mixture of psychological elements is fused together to make spiritual “gold.” Put simply, this is the process of the “transmutation” of one’s impressions into finer, much more precious “substances,” namely concepts. We should note here that the Arabic word alchemy has its roots in Egypt, which was known in old Arabia as the Land of the Chems—the Egyptians. Alchemy means, literally, “the Egyptian way.” It is also the origin of our own word chemistry, a philological legacy that, if nothing else, demonstrates just how potent and far-reaching these Egyptian influences can be.
It may seem something of an oversimplification of this elaborate pyramid ritual to say that it is nothing more than a description of a single alchemical process, a simple trick of the mind. But then it has frequently been acknowledged, particularly among scientists, that the most elegant ideas and theories are often the most simple, sometimes so much so that, once known and understood, they become obvious. Perhaps, then, these Egyptian mysteries, whose purpose must have been obvious to the people who created them, can also be understood without recourse to masses of technical data—simply by using basic common sense.
In fact, the “trick” in question is straightforward only in theory. In practice, it can be a most difficult thing to accomplish, at least for sustained periods. Yogis say that it takes years to master the art completely, to learn to compose the mind for periods long enough for new concepts to take root within it. But this is leading on to wider psychological issues involving detailed systems of self-discipline, the development of powers of concentration, of the will, and so on. We can return to this question in a later chapter. For the present, it is the theory itself that is of primary concern and in particular the idea that “creative light rays”—the Egyptian khuti—play a fundamental part in the whole musically structured process of evolution.
Khuti itself—the Great Pyramid—was known in Chaldea as Urim middin, which means “Lights-measures.” The name is significant because it suggests that the monument was something more than an elite place of initiation or a mere symbol for a solar cult: that in fact the Egyptians had quite literally encoded within it measurable data relating to the phenomenon of light.
When one thinks of “lights-measures,” the first thing that comes to mind is the speed at which light travels, which is about 300,000 kilometers per second. Physicists regard this speed as an absolute physical law; nothing, they say, can travel faster than light. In Einstein and Herman Minkowski’s famous equation relating energy to matter, E = mc2, c2 is the constant velocity of light multiplied by itself. The square of the constant, therefore, is an important number in theoretical physics because, when it is multiplied by a factor of m—the mass of a given thing—it gives a value for the amount of nuclear energy latent within it.
So, to the obvious question: is it possible that this particular “lights-measure”—the velocity of light—is encoded somewhere within the design of the Great Pyramid, or in texts relating to it, or in the Giza necropolis as a whole? Most academics would no doubt regard such a notion with the same kind of derision that theories about Atlantis and holy space-invaders have engendered over the years. After all, these people supposedly hadn’t even invented the wheel back in 2500 BCE, so how could they possibly have had any inkling of scientific absolutes?
Despite such an obvious contradiction, we can be reasonably sure that the Egyptians, like today’s physicists, regarded light as the ultimate phenomenon, a yardstick by which all things could be measured. This is not to say that they ever attempted to calculate the velocity of moving objects in terms of distance and time, but that they measured or perceived things—light included—as forms of resonance obeying musical laws. These are laws, remember, that were expressed symbolically, not only through the pi convention but also through myth, in particular the myth of the original pantheon of eight gods who, it is said, all appeared simultaneously out of an “island of flame,” an island of light.
Light, therefore, seems to have been viewed as the most vibrant of all phenomena, an octave of resonance operating at absolute or optimum frequencies—in effect a musical constant.
In the light octave, as in any other, there are eight fundamental “notes”—or colors—the seven primary ones and white. The combined harmonic value of these eight “notes” corresponds to the overall frequency at which light resonates—the constant rate. This concept of an “eight-note constant” is particularly interesting, because if we follow the example of Minkowski and multiply it by itself we end up with a value for the square of the constant of sixty-four “notes.” This is significant because the Greeks associated the Great Pyramid with another interesting number relating to an “Egyptian” system known as the Magic Square of Mercury (Mercury is a Romanized name for Hermes/Thoth). This is the number 2,080, the sum of all the factors from 1 to 64. The “Minkowski shuffle,” it seems, is a very old trick indeed.
I’m no scientist, and higher mathematics gives me vertigo, but it seems to me, as I have stated previously, that the modern quantum view of a nonlocal universe in which light, the omnipresent Holy Ghost, is the prime mover, was at the very least intuitively perceived by the metaphysicians of ancient Egypt. Let’s say they somehow attained a higher level of consciousness, which enabled them to tune in to the quantum field, to penetrate the plane of light, where everything, as it were, resonates at the constant rate. (Actually there may be certain evolutionary processes operating in the universe that resonate at the constant rate squared, and even at frequencies infinitely higher—but that’s another chapter in an ongoing saga. We can come back to this idea at a later stage.)
Of course, there is one fundamental difference between the old Egyptian science of “lights-measures” and the modern quantum description of light: the former science not only encompasses “values” for the constant, and the square of the constant, it also recognizes the phenomenon of light as an essentially musical or hermetic manifestation, an octave. More than that, this visible spectrum of seven combined frequencies also has three principal aspects connected with it, which we identify as the three “primary” colors. So light is, in effect, a “triple-octave” structure; it is an electromagnetic manifestation of the pi symmetry, the Hermetic Code.
It is now generally accepted that this same code is the basic blue-print of the geometry of the Great Pyramid, “The Lights,” whose height (481.3949 feet) stands in relation to its base perimeter (3023.16 feet) as the radius of a circle stands in relation to its circumference. Therefore, if we multiply the height of the Great Pyramid by 2pi, we obtain a precise value for the monument’s base perimeter: 481.3949 × 3.14 × 2 = 3023.16 feet.
It so happens that the value of pi is incorporated in the dimensions of another unique monument, also a pyramid, located on the opposite side of the Atlantic. This is the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacán in Mexico, which is also, in my view, dedicated to the phenomenon of light. Whereas the angle of slope of the Great Pyramid is 51 degrees, 51 minutes, the angle of slope of the Pyramid of the Sun is approximately 43.5 degrees. The base perimeter is 2932.8 feet and its height is (or was) approximately 233.5 feet. Obviously the 2pi relationship cannot be applied here, because the Pyramid of the Sun has a much gentler angle of slope than that of the Great Pyramid. But if we substitute 4pi into the equation and multiply it by the height of the Pyramid of the Sun, we once again obtain an accurate value for the measurement of its perimeter: 233.5 feet × 3.14 × 2 = 2932.76 feet.1
What we have here, then, are two quite distinct “solar” cultures, separated by a great expanse of ocean and (possibly) time: the builders of both went to a great deal of trouble to construct gigantic pyramids with dimensions and proportions indicating a knowledge of the pi relationship.
And there is more. This same ratio has also been identified very recently in the structural dimensions of other important megalithic constructions of the ancient world, namely Stonehenge and another example of a pyramid, Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, both in southern England.
In his book Thoth, Architect of the Universe, Ralph Ellis points out that the two central pillars in the “inner horseshoe” formation at Stonehenge, the two “trilithons,” which were originally capped by a slightly overhanging, curved lintel, would in their original state have given a graphic representation of the Greek letter pi. There is nothing particularly remarkable about this in itself. As Ellis himself acknowledges, there are “Arcs de Triomphes” in many ancient and modern cities. But, according to Ellis, the dimensions of the two trilithons, the most finely dressed stones of the entire monument, confirm mathematically that the pi symmetry was recognized by its designer.
Ellis uses as his units of measure what he calls the Zil yard and the Zil foot. A Zil yard, equivalent in length to the Old Saxon yard, is 1.004 meters. In the 1960s, Alexander Thom, a professor of engineering at Oxford University, established that Neolithic sites such as Stonehenge, Avebury, and many others in Western Europe had been designed using a unit he called the Megalithic yard, equivalent to 0.83 meters. But Ellis believes that his ancient measures are equally valid factors in the geometry and dimensions of such monuments as Stonehenge. His line of reasoning in this respect is a little too involved to detail here, but if we take the Zil foot as being one third of an Old Saxon yard and use it to measure the height of the two trilithons and the distance between the centers of them, we find that all-too-familiar ratio: height, 22 Zil feet, width, 7.
Ellis shows further that this same ratio is incorporated in the dimensions of the step pyramid of Silbury Hill, which is now believed to have been constructed in the same era as the Pharaoh Zoser’s Third Dynasty step pyramid at Saqqarah. Whereas the Great Pyramid has a perimeter equal to 2 × pi × height, and the perimeter of the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico is equal to 4 × pi × height, the Silbury pyramid’s perimeter, whose angle of slope is exactly 30 degrees, is equal to 3.5 × pi × height.2
We thus have four extremely ancient structures from widely separated cultures, three of them giant pyramids, the dimensions and proportions of which all indicate a knowledge on the part of their designers of the pi relationship. In the case of Stonehenge and Silbury Hill, apart from their dimensions or astronomical associations, they stand mute, unsupported by any long-standing myths relating to their creators. Fortunately this is not the case with the cultures of Egypt and ancient America, whose legends abound with stories describing the godlike qualities of the creators of their extant architectural masterpieces. And when we begin to compare the myths from the Americas and from Egypt we find that the pyramid structure is by no means the only common factor. Graham Hancock has already pointed out the similarity in the facial features of the god Viracocha depicted in sculptures in South America, and Osiris in Egypt, both of whom are portrayed as bearded, light-skinned Caucasians. In addition, we have the evidence of the structures themselves, all of which have been constructed out of blocks of immense proportions. But there is also another significant common factor in the traditions of these two cultures, and this is light.
We have heard how Osiris and his resilient band of survivors materialized simultaneously from an “island of flame.” And the most characteristic feature of a flame, of course, is the light it generates, which again reminds us of the old Egyptian name for the Great Pyramid: khuti—“The Lights.”
In some of the legends of the Maya, the god Viracocha is said to have landed with a number of companions on the shores of the eastern sea following some kind of global catastrophe so calamitous that it had even obscured the sun. Viracocha apparently then set about civilizing the Americas, bringing back the sun and its light. So, in the context of this ancient myth, as with the myths of the life of Osiris, light and the wisdom of this great civilizer are very closely connected.
As we have noted, the idea that spiritual or psychological harmony is intrinsically connected with light is one of the most enduring in history. Read the book of Revelation, for example, one of the most powerful of scriptures, and you will see musical structures and references to light leaping out from every one of its twenty-two chapters. Similarly, the Passion itself, an eight-day event that culminated in Christ transcending onto the greater scale above, is in essence virtually identical to the myth surrounding the life, death, and resurrection of Osiris. Significantly, the “Passion” of Osiris, which was first enacted publicly by the Egyptian priesthood in Abydos during the Twelfth Dynasty, consisted of eight consecutive performances.
According to Christian tradition, on the eighth day of the Passion, Jesus floated upward on a cloud to heaven. The cloud is not without symbolic meaning, because it was through a cloud that God is said to have spoken to Noah and later to Moses of his covenant, symbolized by the rainbow, the spectrum of light, the “seven spirits” of the God of Revelation.
Many other examples of religious doctrines embracing one or another aspect of musical theory have been discussed at length in The Infinite Harmony. But the important point about all of these belief systems is that through this common principle of a harmonious development up through the earthly scale of our origins and on to a “heavenly” scale, these highly potent teachings, anachronistic though they may appear, are even today continually drawing the attention of billions of devotees upward. It’s as if all of mankind’s higher thoughts and aspirations are inevitably light-bound, heading—quite literally—for the sun and the stars.
The fact that these belief systems are still forces to be reckoned with suggests to me that “religious” concepts and precepts, being hermetic, or harmonious in every way, are quite naturally fixed in the memories of whole populations, not merely for a few years or so but for centuries and millennia. This, I believe, is what Gurdjieff would call real or “objective” art.
In the ordinary sense, of course, we cannot touch, weigh, or measure religious concepts and symbols: they are “metaphysical.” But they exist, in one form or another, in all our minds. We noted earlier how a number of investigators have independently suggested that people’s thoughts, if they are forceful enough, may be as real as the ground on which we stand. Bohm and Gurdjieff, for example, each believed that consciousness is actually a rarefied, currently unmeasurable form of matter. If this were so, then, theoretically, this ephemeral form of materiality known as a “concept,” once created, would have the potential to exist independently of the individual mind that conceived it. This would, perhaps, explain why the extraordinarily resilient ideas and concepts of the Egyptians or the Greeks, or of individuals like Muhammad or Isaac Newton, Moses or Einstein, are still around for all to “see,” because, being in essence psychologically harmonious, they are highly resonant “things” in their own right. The Egyptians, I believe, regarded concepts in precisely this way, as a qualitative form of resonance operating according to musical laws. Viewed as such, religious, philosophical, and indeed seminal scientific concepts and ideas can be envisaged as metaphysical “notes” in the unfinished symphony of mankind’s evolution.
Go at any time into a cathedral, a mosque, a synagogue, or a science faculty and you will witness the direct effect of these evolutionary metaphysical “notes,” these concepts, on all those within. All of these human activities, all of the emotions and thoughts involved, are “light-bound,” the residual product of human evolution, slowly gathering and increasing in rarefaction toward a condition of optimum psychological resonance. Generally it’s a slow process, but this is because most social animals live not by the higher ideals and precepts of a Christ or a Buddha, but by Darwinian principles, through which changes, or beneficial mutations, happen only very rarely. Fortunately, perhaps, we don’t all have to live like apes, because a way out of the Darwinian mode has already been charted by our early ancestors, and the sun, the stars, and even the galaxies themselves are all stations en route.
All this, of course, has staggering implications, because it suggests that the ancient Egyptians were in certain respects psychologically more advanced than we are today. Through some kind of practical application of the Hermetic Code, a key feature of which was the “pyramid ritual,” these people managed to “enlighten” themselves, to climb up onto the higher plane of light, and go down into the quantum universe of the photon quantum. The hermetic phrase “As above, so below” expresses this concept perfectly.
The plane of light—the physicists’ “quantum field”—permeates the whole of the material world existing in time. And, as we have noted, the omnipresent photon is the “force-carrier” of all quantum processes, the intermediary between all electromagnetic interactions. So when matter changes, say, by transmuting under intense heat and pressure, as when carbon-based compounds turn into diamond, or by decomposing, as in the oxidation of metal or the weathering of stone, photons are continually being absorbed or radiated by electrons in kaleidoscopes of highly resonant particle/wave activity. So if, as Yogananda asserted, it is indeed possible for the disciplined mind to tune in to the optimum harmonic frequencies at which photons resonate, and thereby enter the timeless, spaceless heaven of the ancients, then we are considering here access to a higher scale or plane of existence that in fact reaches right into the very heart of the electron, one of the basic constituents of all matter.
We have already seen that, according to many ancient myths, the Egyptians and their Native American counterparts used “music,” or some form of sound technology, as an aid in their construction techniques, particularly in respect of the movement of heavy blocks. We also noted Andrew Collins’s investigations into sonic technology in his book Gods of Eden, in which he describes eyewitness accounts of travelers to Tibet in the 1930s who saw the apparent levitation of stone blocks actuated by priests using numerous customized instruments. According to one witness, the mysterious Dr. Jarl, the use of musical or sound instruments by the priests in these demonstrations appeared to have been “accompanied” by silent “players” in the drama, namely the two hundred or so monks standing in rows eight to ten deep behind the musicians themselves, whom Jarl suggested might have been contributing toward the procedure by applying some form of coordinated psychokinetic force to influence the outcome of the event.
We are talking here of something very similar to what Colin Wilson has called the “group-mind” situation, the notion expressed way back before the time of Plato in the form of the Greek concept of a state of homonoia. Possibly, therefore, the instruments used by these Tibetan priests were effective primarily because they had been devised and subsequently activated by a highly trained collective of psychologically harmonious individuals, enlightened people whose minds were already “in tune” with what Schwaller de Lubicz described as “all the rhythms and harmonies of the energies in the universe.”
The highest and most resonant of the “energies” alluded to here is, of course, light itself. As we have noted, the velocity of light is an absolute physical law. It is also the key to the timeless, nonlocal plane of light, the fifth dimension, defined mathematically by physicists as a sphere of existence in which there is no time and space. This is the dimension that I believe is described in myth by the Egyptians as the Kingdom of Osiris or the Duat, which refers both to the starry world above (the higher plane of light) and the mysterious underworld below (the nonlocal, quantum field of the subatomic particle). And Osiris, of course, who had the ability to perceive both of these domains simultaneously, was head of the musical pantheon of eight gods, whose principal monument —the Great Pyramid—was primarily associated with the phenomenon of light, which is itself a musically structured phenomenon. Thus we have a whole series of very close connections between the “builder gods,” music and light. Add to this equation a correspondingly high level of consciousness (which we know existed at that time, because “it” conceived of the Hermetic Code) and we may well have all the ingredients necessary for the optimization of any activity, whether it be building a pyramid or simply sweeping a temple floor. Of course, identifying all the ingredients is one thing, but understanding how to combine them, and in what measure, is quite another. It is this distinction, one suspects, that marks the real difference between the ancients’ intuitive right-brain knowledge system and our own fragmented left-brain method, which is the difference between feeling something in one’s bones and merely knowing certain associated “facts.”
Therefore any number of us today might go out into a meadow en masse and try to mimic the exercise described by Jarl, detail by detail, with disappointing results, because we would be merely aping, lacking the experience derived from long periods of disciplined, serious work involving systematic exercises in meditation, in “stilling” and sub-sequently developing the powers of the mind. Heavy blocks of stone would very likely remain just that, solid lumps of matter locked in a universal and inviolable gravitational field, in which everything is permanently endowed with a tangible property known as “mass.” But then we are not trained ascetics; we are predominantly secular, with secular demands made upon us, and we have neither the time nor the inclination to spend years acting out the “pyramid ritual” in a disciplined way. Maybe if we had, like Yogananda, for example, or Jarl’s Tibetan hosts, we might see “things” in an entirely different light.
The possible methods of manufacture and construction employed by the stonemasons of ancient Egypt are currently the subject of much heated debate. By and large, everyone seems to be genuinely baffled.
Currently in focus are a number of controversial suggestions as to the engineering techniques used by these “primitive” construction teams, such as, for example, Christopher Dunn’s ideas about sonic/ ultrasonic stone carving and drilling as outlined in his book The Giza Power Plant. The latest data, both the pros and cons of Dunn’s ideas, were for a time posted regularly online, so we need not dwell on them here: suffice it to say that the question of machining techniques in the distant past is far from resolved. Andrew Collins has also contributed to the debate with his investigations into the ancients’ sonic technology and the possible use of “sonic platforms” in the raising and transportation of their megalithic blocks. The description of the stone-raising techniques of the Tibetans by Dr. Jarl further implies the possible involvement of psychokinesis in the procedure: use of the homonoic technique.
Inevitably orthodox scholars will reject such notions outright. The general consensus is, of course, that the ancient stonemasons and builders used “primitive” methods only. Presumably this even applies to the four gargantuan monoliths incorporated several courses up in the retaining wall of the Temple of Baalbek. These blocks, remember, whose combined mass is estimated to be a staggering three thousand tons, were cut, perfectly shaped, and then transported to Baalbek from a quarry several hundred meters distant. While it may be difficult for us to imagine a scenario in which these giant stones were made to resonate in such a way as to make them temporarily weightless, the proposition is no more fantastic than the conventional position, which holds that these giant blocks were transported this distance and then raised using only ropes, rollers, and wooden levers. Indeed, of the two scenarios, the first seems more likely: it does at least fit the bill, whereas the “primitive” answer patently does not. And then we have the “musical” myths, of course, which speak of “builder gods” who could make blocks of stone float through the air simply by whistling or playing sound instruments. Significantly, there are no myths about “magic” ropes or “charmed” levers. There is only music—music and a “union of minds.”
So what these myths tell us, in fact, is that the ancient builder gods had somehow discovered a way to effect a powerful psychic interaction between mind and the elemental world of matter. Sound may have played an important part in the procedure, but consciousness itself, through some kind of union with light, would have been the prime mover.
We have noted that Jahn and Dunne’s experimental research has consistently produced statistical data indicating that most people possess a weak psychokinetic ability. They believe that psychokinesis is possible because consciousness itself is a kind of particle/wave phenomenon, with its wave mode, like all waves, capable of producing effects at a distance. Like the ancient Greeks and the yogis of the East, they do not see these psychokinetic effects as one-way processes, but rather as complementary exchanges of “resonance” between the thinker and the object.
Not too long ago, ideas like this would have been summarily laughed out of court, but when one hears today’s scientists talking of particle consciousness, of “mind-like” electrons and “telepathic” photons, it begins to look as if anything is possible. Furthermore, the suggestion that the mind can somehow generate sufficient force to collapse the wave-packets of quantum systems outside the brain is in no way ruled out by these latest observations. In fact, when considering the nonlocal “action at a distance” between correlated photons, one might reasonably say: if fundamental particles can do it, then the human brain itself, an almost supernaturally well-coordinated mass of trillions upon trillions of highly active wave/particles, can perhaps do it infinitely better.
Interestingly, scientists are now trying to understand all physical phenomena not as isolated entities, but as integral parts of a single but much wider picture of reality, one that, significantly, also includes the mind of the observer. Particles, we are told, manifest as such only when certain of their properties are “seen,” when they have been detected by an investigator—usually through annihilation of the particle and analysis of the debris. Without the participation of an observer, it seems, “particles” as such don’t exist; they remain, as Bohm says, “enfolded,” in a wavelike state of limbo. So the two aspects of quantum reality—the observer and the observed—are now seen as integral functions of the same phenomenon. Obviously, introducing this psychological element into scientific investigation is an important development, because it is leading scientists on to question the nature of their own consciousness. Possibly, therefore, the next generation of physicists will ultimately become “yogis” in their own right, able to experience for themselves the fundamental laws they have for so long been trying to formulate. Certainly, if there is a continuation of present trends by which the dividing line between scientific thought and metaphysics becomes ever fainter, we would do well to watch this space.
We will be returning later to the question of some kind of psychic element being involved in the construction of the ancient buildings of Egypt and the Americas. But in the case of the Giza necropolis in particular, another important question is, of course, why? Why did these early masons take the trouble to build on what is, even by modern standards, an incredibly vast scale?
The answer, it seems to me, is that they were totally and selflessly committed to the task of transmitting the essence of their ideas about light, music, and consciousness out into the exoteric world, and they obviously realized that the most effective and enduring way to do this was by “writing” all this data not on perishable parchment but in stone. Thoth himself, the originator of the Hermetic Code, whose followers designed and constructed the Giza site, was known in ancient times as the “scribe of the gods,” a writer no less. We have all heard it said how much mightier is the pen than the sword. Nowhere is this adage more applicable than at Giza, where the “scribes” used quills the size of pneumatic drills and wrote in gigantic, three-dimensional “letters” across acres of bedrock.
The magnificent architecture of these Masonic scribes seems astonishing to us today. But the old and weathered physical remains of this great builder culture are really only a tiny part of the greater edifices constructed by these remarkable individuals.
So the Great Pyramid, the most impressive monument to light ever created on Earth, massive and imposing as it is, is really no more than a foundation stone upon which has been constructed another, infinitely vaster, metaphysical structure, a creation of sorts, whose indeterminate dimensions are even to this day expanding ever outward and upward. I am referring here, of course, to the ongoing evolution of human consciousness, which began its present stage of development at the time the Great Pyramid was designed, and which has ever since been guided subconsciously by the all-embracing hermetic principles embodied within it.
The Hermetic Code, therefore, is an evolutionary code. It describes exactly how DNA and the genetic code operate in the creation of greater organic structures, and for the last five thousand years it has been the basis of every major religion on Earth, movements designed specifically to facilitate the continuing evolution of human consciousness into higher “scales” of existence. Everything else we might surmise about the knowledge of the originators of this code is secondary to this fundamental concept. The Egyptians were brilliant architects, master craftsmen, highly accomplished astronomers possessed of the details of geodetics and precession, but they were first and foremost evolutionists, people who fully understood the underlying harmonies and rhythms inherent in the creative processes of nature and who conducted the whole of their lives in accordance with them.
So the “Egyptian way,” the art of the alchemist, was the path of “creative evolution,” an organic system of development and spiritual growth that fully complemented the evolutionary forces of nature. In the following chapter, in which we look at some of the ideas of the modern evolutionist, we shall see that this remarkable system is as meaningful to us today as it was to the ancient Egyptians.