Symbolism (eBook)

Modern Thought and Ancient Egypt

Michael Allswang (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
408 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-0983-3964-7 (ISBN)

From the Preface: 'Standing behind the words in this book, like the falcon god Horus enclosing Pharaoh in his wings, is the leitmotif of man's consciousness. After much study, reflection, and also visits to many ancient Egyptian monuments, I have come to the conclusion that the development of consciousness was the essential project of the priests of ancient Egypt, and that one of the means they used to achieve this end was the expression of spiritual truths by means of symbolism.' Modern thought and ancient Egypt are both based on symbolism. While we think that our science is 'true,' in reality it is a symbolism of mathematical equations based on theories that may or may not conform to reality. The creation of the universe by the 'Big Bang' is no more 'true' than the creation by the Egyptian 'god' Atum creating the world from Nun, the chaotic watery abyss. Their conception of creation was just as true for them as our conception is for us. Both are symbols of a reality unexplainable by the reasoning mind. The symbolism of ancient Egypt, contrary to what most Egyptologists say, has to do, we believe, not only with the afterlife, but with the development of man's consciousness in this life. Modern science only deals with what can be measured, thus limiting itself to the physical plane of existence and ignoring higher levels of consciousness that cannot be measured. Ancient Egypt did not have this limitation: their so-called 'gods' were actually symbols for cosmic functions or laws that operated on every level of existence including that within man.

From the Preface: "e;Standing behind the words in this book, like the falcon god Horus enclosing Pharaoh in his wings, is the leitmotif of man's consciousness. After much study, reflection, and also visits to many ancient Egyptian monuments, I have come to the conclusion that the development of consciousness was the essential project of the priests of ancient Egypt, and that one of the means they used to achieve this end was the expression of spiritual truths by means of symbolism."e;Modern thought and ancient Egypt are both based on symbolism. While we think that our science is "e;true,"e; in reality it is a symbolism of mathematical equations based on theories that may or may not conform to reality. The creation of the universe by the "e;Big Bang"e; is no more "e;true"e; than the creation by the Egyptian "e;god"e; Atum creating the world from Nun, the chaotic watery abyss. Their conception of creation was just as true for them as our conception is for us. Both are symbols of a reality unexplainable by the reasoning mind. The symbolism of ancient Egypt, contrary to what most Egyptologists say, has to do, we believe, not only with the afterlife, but with the development of man's consciousness in this life. Modern science only deals with what can be measured, thus limiting itself to the physical plane of existence and ignoring higher levels of consciousness that cannot be measured. Ancient Egypt did not have this limitation: their so-called "e;gods"e; were actually symbols for cosmic functions or laws that operated on every level of existence including that within man. The book is divided into two main parts, the first having to do with modern conceptions of symbolism. Included here are how symbolism is related to the cosmos and modern science, how it is used in the culture of civilizations, and how it can influence individual man by the way of religious symbols. Finally, some metaphysical principles are introduced in order to clarify further the nature of symbolism. To even begin to understand the subject matter, we must first understand what is meant by "e;symbol,"e; its function and how symbols are integrated into a Traditional culture such as that of ancient Egypt. The intent of the first part of the book is an explanation of my understanding of the meaning and function of symbolism, which is absolutely necessary to understand symbolism in ancient Egypt, since the role of symbolism is so very far from the purely mentally-based non-Traditional culture in which we find ourselves. To this end, the word "e;symbol"e; is explained in its largest sense as that by which a man can be aided in his spiritual transformation, if such is his desire. Thus, a symbol is not discussed as being limited to painted and sculptured figures, but also includes religious edifices as well as hieroglyphs and elements of myth. After introducing the subject of symbolism, Part 2 discusses symbolism in ancient Egypt proper. The purpose here is to try to put the reader, as much as can be done with the written word, in the symbolic world of ancient Egypt. Here we discuss ancient Egyptian mind and spirituality, the pantheon of the "e;gods"e; (or neters ), man's nature as they saw it, the role of the pharaoh, ritual symbolism, hieroglyphs and sacred texts, as well as pyramids and temples, all the while trying to illustrate the function of symbolism as a means of organizing the Egyptian culture by the priests so as to provide a "e;Way"e; for each individual to reach, in so far as he is capable, that "e;inner sanctum"e; within himself. We also introduce mythology in general, its function in relation to symbolism, and how it is a spiritual teaching. We then go into purely Egyptian mythology and put forth our view that there are not "e;different"e; Egyptian myths but only variations on one basic leitmotif of all myth: the removal to a faraway place from man's spiritual nature and the means by which it can be brought back to its rightful home.

Chapter 1Symbolism and the Cosmos

At the beginning of the third millennium, we are now seeing that the analytic nature of the scientific method, which breaks down reality into isolated bits in order to study the part at the expense of the whole, while having its purposes, is starting to lose the backing of a growing number of scientists as a way to understand a fuller reality of the world. Relativity and quantum theory, the two basic theories by which we currently interpret the nature of the universe, are, after all, incompatible! On the one hand, Einstein demonstrated the relative natures of time, space and movement, while on the other, Bohr and others used absolute time and space in their elucidation of the nature of the atomic world. Furthermore, relativity and quantum theory have shown the impossibility of trying to understand the whole by an analysis of the parts. Relativity, for example, shows the futility of trying to fix elements in space or time by positing gravity as a function of the curvature of space-time. And quantum theory describes subatomic particles that change orbits around a nucleus without passing through the space between them, particles that simply change into each other, and those that arise from and disappear into a substratum of pure energy, which is the interchangeability of energy and matter (Einstein’s E=mc2). It describes light that can be both waves and particles depending on the experiment, the impossibility of detecting both the velocity and position of an atomic particle due to the influence of the experimenter himself, and atomic particles acting in harmony even though that are at a distance beyond which the speed of light could provide information between them. The Austrian biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy, the founder of modern systems theory, takes the point even further:

The popular antithesis between motion and rest becomes meaningless in the theory of relativity. The antithesis of mass and energy is superseded by Einstein’s conservation law which accounts for their mutual transformation. Corpuscle and wave are both legitimate and complementary aspects of physical reality which, in certain phenomena and respects, is to be described in one way, in others in the second. The contrast between structure and process breaks down in the atom as well as in the living organism whose structure is at the same time the expression and the bearer of a continuous flow of matter and energy. Perhaps the age-old problem of body and mind is of a similar nature, these being different aspects...of one and the same reality.5

All these seemingly “illogical” results have led at least some scientists to return to a pre-Greek mode of thought. Tribal cultures, early civilizations, esoteric religions are all founded on the belief in a complete harmony of a universal order based on an interpenetrating hierarchy of worlds where everything has its place in both the horizontal dimension of everyday experience and the vertical dimension of states of being. A ‘real’ religion is thus not a simple collection of beliefs, rites, and rituals referring to spiritual matters, but is rather a sort of organism where all the parts are part of a unified whole by which man can become aware of this dual nature.6

These scientists, despite their ‘scientism,’ are perhaps searching for a whole which allows for the understanding of the parts rather studying the parts to comprehend the whole. For example, quantum theory never posits ‘things’ but only relations. Atomic particles cannot be understood as isolated entities but only through their relations among other particles and energies. Furthermore, there are also non-local relations where each event is influenced by the whole universe, where only probabilities can be assumed from the dynamics of the whole system:

Whereas in classical mechanics the properties and behavior of the parts determine those of the whole, the situation is reversed in quantum mechanics: it is the whole that determines the behavior of the parts.7 [Our italics]

This conception, that “the whole determines the behavior of the parts” is a return to the metaphysics of the East where, in no wise can the lower influence the higher, but where ever more subtler influences or energies of a higher order can and do influence lower forms of energies in an ordered hierarchy of interrelated levels down to the physical world that we know only too well. This leads to David Bohm’s concept of “unbroken wholeness”8 where the analysis only of the parts is inherently flawed, since the larger systems in which they exist, even up to the universe as a whole, influence the parts’ behavior.

As a means for trying to understand the world of symbolism, we might look to two models modern scientific thought has developed: holography and systems theory. By looking at these models developed from a modern scientific point of view, and however far they are from what René Guénon would call “traditional science,” we hope they could help develop in ourselves, if nothing else, at least the beginning of feeling for what might have been an ancient world view based on an interconnected dynamic universe—and so be able to more easily intuit how symbolism functions in such a civilization.

Holography

The holography model arose from a theory of Dennis Gabor in the 1940’s to store images by means of light diffracted from an object. He developed a mathematical scheme by which these images could be reconstructed, which he called “holograms” (from the Greek “holos” or whole and “gramma” or message, hence “whole message”). The physical realization of a hologram was made possible by the invention in the 1960’s of the laser, which emits a beam of light having coherent light waves, that is, they all have the same frequency rather than the mixed frequencies of ordinary light. Now any wave phenomenon, such as light or ripples in a pond, create interference patterns when the waves meet. For example, if you drop two pebbles in a pond, the concentric waves created will interact with each other such that crests meeting crests or troughs meeting troughs will produce a larger wave, while crest meeting a trough will cancel each other out. The result of all these meetings creates, at any moment, an interference pattern.

The same effect is created by interfering light waves, and the interference pattern of light diffracted from an object and captured on film is called a hologram. This is achieved by firing a laser beam through a partially silvered mirror called a “beam splitter” so that one beam (the object beam) is diffused on the object, then diffracted onto a film, and the other (the reference beam) is sent by mirrors to be diffused directly on the film. The two colliding beams create an interference pattern which is recorded as a hologram on the holographic plate. What is interesting here is that each point of diffused light is spread over the entire surface of the film making it blurred. Looking at the film, one only sees a seemingly meaningless swirl of abstract concentric circles, but which contain within it an order representing the “holographed” object. To realize this order within, one only has to shine another laser beam through the film to create a three-dimensional image of the object in space that allows you to actually walk around it as if it was a real object. See Figure 3.

Figure 3 A holographic setup

Another interesting facet of a hologram is that if you cut the film of a hologram in pieces, each piece will still give you an image of the whole object, though the smaller the piece of film, the less distinct the image. That is to say, the whole image is found in each part or each part contains the whole. The discovery of the hologram has resulted in the use of the holographic model in many different domains. Apart from the field of Bohm’s holomovement discussed previously to explain the cosmos, it has also been used to explain the functioning of the brain in the work of Karl Pribram.

Looking at the universe using the hologram as a metaphor, we might say that just as every part of a hologram contains all the information of the whole image, so we might say that every cosmic particle contains all the information of the whole of the cosmos. Bohm’s theory supports this idea by supposing an immense sea of energy connecting everything that we experience as the ‘material world’ with the whole universe; that is, everything is connected to everything else by a substratum of finer energy, just as every point in a hologram is connected to the whole image by a diffused interference pattern of light. While this seems very elegant as a description of reality, what evidence is there to support it? By assuming subatomic particles are not separate entities, but an extension of a fundamental energy connecting everything in the universe, the holographic model answers the question of how particles can act simultaneously in a synchronized manner at a distance where even the speed of light would not be enough to provide the information necessary for them to act together (a puzzle arising out of quantum mechanics).

In a hierarchical universe,...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	16.2.2021
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
ISBN-10	1-0983-3964-9 / 1098339649
ISBN-13	978-1-0983-3964-7 / 9781098339647

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