FINAL PREPARATIONS The next day I can hardly wait till evening to report to Ptahhotep. On the other hand, I've made enough progress in self-control for me not to let the reins slip out of my hand regardless of any amount of pressure external things may be exerting upon me. Fully conscious, I observe how external events affect my nerve centres, and I simply refuse to let my nerves get stirred up when I don't want them to. The moment their natural reaction begins, I move in with my consciousness between them and the action they have begun to take, and I consciously command my entire nervous system to become as calm and cool as a piece of steel. But now, after Ptahhotep has told me he has something important to say, I can scarcely keep my heart from beating faster every time I think about it, and I think about it often. Evening comes at last, and I walk through the long colonnade to his little reception room. Fully composed, I stand before him again. Ptahhotep receives me as he always does. His noble face radiates something indescribably exalted, and so I have no way of knowing whether he has something special in mind. 'My little daughter,' he begins, 'you've progressed to the point that the ability of your mind to control all the natural forces in your body has been made completely conscious. From now on, it depends on your own will whether you give expression to a force or not. Neither in your mind nor in your soul nor in your body are you any longer a slave of nature. But I must point out to you that there still exists the possibility of your becoming a slave again. If you consciously apply your will, nobody and nothing can keep you from preserving your freedom ... or from allowing yourself to be enslaved again by the forces arising from your own self. It is God's will—and therefore a law—that every spirit has complete freedom of will. No one may violate this freedom. That's why you should never stop exercising constant self-control and self-analysis. 'You are now ripe for initiation. But remember that the omniscience and the omnipotence conferred upon you by initiation includes commensurate responsibility. Carefully and thoughtfully, you must now finally decide whether you want to be initiated and, through initiation, take tremendous responsibility upon yourself. 'Stay home for three days and practise complete silence. If you are still determined to go through with initiation, your father will accompany you here on the fourth day, the day of the new moon, so that you can make your final preparations.' I would like to tell Him that I am already determined, but I notice that He is perfectly aware of my determination. Nevertheless, the regulations must be observed, so I bow again and leave.
I use the three days first and foremost to take leave of everything to which I am personally attached. I know I'll be a completely different person when I come home from the temple as an initiate. I wander about the garden again where once I walked with my mother among the flowers. I seek out all the favourite spots of my childhood where I used to play and later dreamed about life and what it would be like. In all these places I stand for a time in silence, taking leave of each tree and each flower, and simultaneously taking leave of the little girl who once was so happy here. Then I visit the gold-fishes in the great pond. I used to feed them when I was so small I could hardly walk, and a slender, delicate person dressed in white took me by the hand to keep me from falling into the water. Today again, I feel this fine, white, ethereal being near me. We are still closely attached, and I know that according to the laws of incarnation, just as she, like a door between the other world and this, helped me to be born, she will help me on again from this world over into the next. At last I come to the court of lions where I take leave of my favourite lions. Until I am initiated, I am only permitted into the court in the presence of the keeper. Today he accompanies me for the last time; as an initiate I too will have power over all animals and will no longer need his protection. Only the lions used by the ruling family are kept here. One of them is the magnificent animal that always sits beside my father during his audiences as a symbol of his superhuman power. Then there are the lions that pull our chariot, and finally my own two animals, Shu-Ghaar and Shima. Both of them were sired by the lion my father has with him in his audiences. They're both equally intelligent, hypersensitive, wonderful examples of their race. Both of them love me just as if I were a lioness rather than a woman. Shu-Ghaar in particular is crazy about me and gets excited and jealous whenever I stroke Shima. I have to watch out that his love doesn't turn into blind and jealous rage. This would be dangerous! As I enter the court, Shu-Ghaar runs over to meet me and pokes his mighty head under my arm as an invitation for me to scratch his neck and ears and stroke his mane, Then, as usual, he tries to lick my face while I dodge as deftly as possible so as not to offend him and make him angry. I hand him a piece of warm meat, and while he devours it I get a moment to pat Shima and give him a piece of meat too. On the third and last day father and I go out before sundown for a chariot ride with our lions. We race about with tremendous pleasure. In accordance with Ptahhotep's instructions, I am not allowed to speak, but even without this commandment, we wouldn't be talking anyway. We understand each other without words. Truth is like an invisible man. He can only make himself visible by putting on clothes. If he puts on a lot of clothes that fit loosely, we get only a very imperfect picture of him. The less he wears, the thinner and tighter his clothing is, the more exact the impression we get of him. But regardless of how well his clothing may reveal his shape, it still covers him, and we see only the clothing but never the invisible person himself. It's exactly the same way with truth! The less words we use to express truth —that is, to cover it and make it visible—the better we can recognize it. But by the mere fact of expressing truth in words, covering it with words, we simultaneously keep ourselves from seeing truth itself in its immediacy, its nakedness, its true being. For people who cannot sec Into each other's minds, words are the only means of communication they possess. But they never see what the other is thinking and would like to say ... only words about it. But we, father and I, see each other! Why should we cover our thoughts and our souls with words? We are here for each other and enjoy the unity of existence! The lions race ahead ... we ride in silence ... we both know what these last days mean. Early in the morning of the great day I take leave of Menu and Bo-Ghar. Menu cries as hopelessly as if I were going to my own funeral. She has baleful forebodings of something terrible to come. There's simply no way I can console her. Little Bo-Ghar has no idea what's happening, but he cries bitterly too because he sees me going away and because Menu is crying. As I start to embrace him, he throws himself on his knees before me and puts his arms about my feet. From the very deepest depths of his soul, he cries out: 'O Queen, my dear Queen, don't forget what I swear unto you now: Any time, any place you are in danger, I'll save you! Even if I am at the other end of the earth, I'll come to you! Remember, as God is my witness, I'll save you!' Dear little Bo-Ghar! He'll save me! But what from? If Ptahhotep finds me prepared and ready for initiation, how could I get into danger? And why is the boy saying that he would even come from the other end of the earth to save me? He's here with me now; how could he possibly go so far away? But I can't think about his words, for the time has come. I embrace them both, then walk over to my father's chambers. Father receives me with a sad and earnest expression, and I see that he is withdrawn and deep within himself. Does he too see something baleful and forbidding in my future? He embraces me, lovingly places his right hand upon my head, and blesses me. Then we go. Ptahhotep awaits us in his little reception room. Before we enter, Ima appears for a moment in the long colonnade. His angelic face is beaming, his eyes smile at me with encouragement, and then he's gone again. I know that his love too will be accompanying me in the difficult challenging hours ahead. Father takes me up to Ptahhotep. He takes my hand and puts it into Ptahhotep's hand. Once again he gives me a loving look and then leaves the room. 'My dear daughter,' says Ptahhotep, 'a great circle of the law in which your destiny manifests itself in the world of time and space is closing today. This circle—your earthly career—was already determined and set the very moment you fell out of divine unity for the first time, just as a boomerang, at the moment it's thrown, has within itself the forces that determine the kind of circle it will make, how high it will rise, how much time its flight will consume, and when it will return to its starting point. 'Your present character and your destiny were built up by the same forces. Both of them are the result of cause and effect, actions and reactions, deeds and experiences through countless lives in which the self has manifested itself throughout ages and ages of time. All these actions and reactions, deeds and experiences have crystallized out in your present person and character. Your character determines your destiny and consequently your future. The self radiates its creative forces through the sieve of the character into the incarnation, and through picture-making forces in the depths of the soul, these energies create dream pictures. These latter project themselves outwardly into the material world where they manifest themselves as your "person" and your "destiny". 'The self radiates into every human being the same creative forces. The fact that so many different dream pictures and so many different persons and destinies arise from these same creative forces is the result of the different influences to which people have been exposed since their fall from paradisiacal unity. 'Whether the future projections of the self which have not yet materialized but are still waiting for materialization in the depths of the soul—in the subconscious—become "realities" on the material plane or whether they merely remain "dream pictures" depends on the plane with which man identifies his consciousness. A "dream" is also "reality", only in the immaterial, picture-making energy world, while what happens on earth and what people call "reality" is also only a "dream", a projection of the self, the only difference being that it is a lower projection, working into the material plane, and visualized into the atmosphere of the earth. Destiny is thus an incarnated projection of the future, a materialized dream. 'As long as a person allows the will of his self—the will of God—to rule, what happens on the material plane, in the so-called "reality", is what he himself consciously wants. Consequently he is also in control of his destiny. This is because a person's self has the power to take those dreams of his which are waiting in his subconscious for materialization and transform them into spiritual energy. On the other hand, the moment a person identifies himself with extraneous forces which are rising, not from within his self, but from within his lower nature, his body, and the moment he recognizes these forces as his own will, what happens is no longer what he himself wants but what his body wants, even though he may be fully convinced that this is his "own" will. In this way he loses control over his destiny and is completely at the mercy of the blind forces of fate. In this case, the "dream pictures" and projections lying latent in his subconscious unavoidably and with absolute certainty turn into "real" events on the earthly plane. "In your initiation, before you re-awaken out of your physical consciousness into the divine cosmic-self-consciousness, the energies which you have created through your deeds and their reactions throughout ages and ages of time and which are now waiting in your subconscious for the time of their materialization—like seeds of future events—will appear in your consciousness as dreams. You can't destroy them because they come forth out of creative forces. But you can prevent these energies from coming down and turning into reality on the level of the material world. You can do this if you yourself, with your consciousness, go down into the depths of your soul, where these forces are hiding in a latent state, and if you awaken them to life in your consciousness and experience these dreams yourself as full reality, "To experience" means that you draw the forces that have been sent out back into your consciousness and live them as states of consciousness. In this way the inner tension within the forces is dissolved away. The energies then fade away, lose their power, and are destroyed. 'In your initiation you will experience your whole future destiny as a series of different states of consciousness—as dream pictures—without being conscious of either time or space. In this way you will become liberated from your "person" and thus from your own personal fate. You will continue to use your body as an absolutely impersonal instrument of God. This is because every initiate has the duty of continuing to work on earth in order to help other people out of the fetters of matter, out of the fetters of the body, out of the claws of blind fate, back into the divinely spiritual state of unity. Everything and everyone that has fallen into separation and into matter by virtue of becoming incarnated must find its way back home to the lost paradise, back to the divine state of unity. 'But when an initiate works in the opposite direction, that is, when he uses his high spiritual energies to create personal realities for himself by directing the supreme, creative, all-penetrating forces from his divine consciousness into his body, he falls lower than an ordinary person who does the very same thing with his consciousness that has fallen out of the paradisiacal unity. The ordinary person directs into matter only the forces arising from his material being. He experiences physical forces in his body, and for him this doesn't represent a fall. He manifests forces on the level from which they come. Material forces remain on the material level. 'The initiate, on the other hand, isn't just working with physical forces, and when he directs his high spiritual energies into the body, he falls from his high state and falls down low. The higher the energy the lower he falls. 'That's why you have to remember that as an initiate—it you want to become one—you can't do things that ordinary people can do with "impunity", because as an initiate you radiate and set in motion divine forces, not human ones. If you direct these forces into your body, you burn out your nerve centres and plunge into the lowest depths like a falling comet. 'Your preparatory exercises have developed you to the point that you can understand these truths. So now, in full consciousness, you can give me your answer. Have you the courage to take upon yourself these laws, the danger and the great responsibility; do you desire to receive initiation, or do you wish rather to withdraw and live out your earthly life according to the laws of human existence?' For a time I keep silent. Then, earnest and determined, I reply, 'Father of my Soul, throughout the years I've been preparing I've had enough time to decide whether I wanted to choose the temple or a worldly life. And during these last three days I've concentrated again on this question and on nothing else. My only longing is for the divine, primordial state. I am absolutely determined. I beg you to initiate me!' 'So be it,' says Ptahhotep, 'and may God be with you! Now follow me.' He takes me to another wing of the temple where the neophytes live. There he turns me over to a young priest, a chief among the boarders, who is awaiting us. I have seen him before. Turning to me Ptahhotep says, 'You will now prepare your body and your soul for initiation. On the day when the moon reaches its fullness, come to me at sundown.' We both of us bow, and He departs. The priest leads me to a cell where I spend the next few days alone, devoting myself exclusively to my exercises. The purpose of these exercises is to bring the purity of my thoughts, my soul, blood and body up to as high a point as possible. Even during the years when I was going to the neophyte school, I had to follow a very strict dietary regimen, in order for the new cells constantly being produced in the body to be chemically purer than those they replaced, and in order for my body tissues to develop resistance enough to be able to bear the highest vibrations. This is because any chemical change in matter alters its resistance to the forces conducted into it. Now the process reaches completion. I am permitted to eat only certain special roots and herbs. I have to chew them thoroughly, and I am permitted only to swallow the juice I can chew out of them. These herbs and roots are so chosen that some of them tend to strengthen and stimulate the organs of excretion, while others have a similar effect on the heart and nerves, so that my whole organism is not weakened. As a result of this new dietary discipline, I feel lighter and lighter with each passing day. Within a few days' time, I even feel as if I didn't have a body at all. On the other hand, my mental lucidity and ability to concentrate increase to a degree I have never known before. In all my life I have never been able to think so clearly ... never been able to perceive spiritual truth with such pristine crystal clarity as now. By mere fasting alone, without the use of strengthening herbs, one can also reach a high degree of mental clarity. But the nerves can suffer damage in the process. Although they become hypersensitive during fasting, they are greatly weakened at the same time. Through the use of these herbs, all the disadvantages of fasting are eliminated. One by one the days go by ... until the day of the full moon comes. Withdrawn deeply inside myself, I go forth to report to Ptahhotep. I enter just as the sun is disappearing below the horizon. 'Follow me,' says Ptahhotep, and leads the way out. Ptahhotep takes me through the temple around the sacrificial table and on over to the great stone wall. The gigantic stone blocks fit together with hairline precision. Now I know why. Ptahhotep steps over to the middle one which slowly swings outward, revealing an opening in the wall. Beyond it lies a broad stone staircase leading downward. We go down to the bottom of the steps, then follow a long passageway. My sense of direction and a certain feeling in my lungs tell me we are walking under the ground. Surprisingly enough, however, there is no mould or mildew, and the air is fresh and pure, with even a scent of ozone in it. At the end of this subterranean passageway, we reach another staircase, leading upward. After we've climbed it, Ptahhotep leads me through more passageways, some wide, some narrow. We walk through rooms of various sizes containing strange and incomprehensible apparatus, then climb up more steps. Finally we enter a large room. All these passageways and rooms—including this one—are brightly illuminated just as if by daylight, yet nowhere can I see a source of light. It seems as if the light were coming from the stones themselves. The equpiment in this room is so mysterious that it immediately captures my full attention. The room is radiantly bright. I see a large, strange, prismatic something that gives me the the impression it's made, not of solid matter, but of light ... of some kind of concentrated, solidified light. This concentrated light mass radiates ordinary light too. That's why the room is so bright. Once while I was visiting a potter, I had a chance to look through the peephole in his fiery kiln. In it several clay vessels were standing in a row, all glowing white with the heat and all completely transparent. I could see them all, one right through the other. They were all radiating light too. And this great mysterious prismatic form is radiating light in just the same way. Yes, light— but no heat! But there are still other incomprehensible objects in this room. They are made of such a strange material and in such remarkable shapes that I can't begin to imagine what purpose they could serve. But there's no time to study them, for I am completely engrossed with the question of my initiation, how it will take place and what I will experience. Ptahhotep leads me into the farthest corner of the room where I discover an empty stone sarcophagus. 'Up to now,' remarks my guide and mentor, 'you've always heard what initiation is, but you don't know how it takes place. 'During initiation, the candidate's body is subjected to a higher frequency than that which corresponds to his degree of consciousness. Thus he becomes conscious on this higher level! 'Only a person prepared through long and strict training can be initiated in this way into a higher power, into a higher level of consciousness, without suffering harm. Only such a person is able to control his body with the help of his intellect, understanding and will-power, and to attune his nerves to higher frequencies. 'As you already know, animals are not able to alter either their mode of living or the condition under which they live. That's why they are not able to bear higher frequencies than their own. To take an example, if a monkey were subjected to a current of the same frequency as man's, it would die within a few minutes of a "stroke", undergoing unspeakable nervous cramps while dying. 'Man, however, can adapt himself, up to the range of an octave, to different vibrations and bear these vibrations without death. In this way, an average person, after adequate physical preparation and training, could be subjected without damage to the current of a genius, in other words, the current of the fifth degree. He would feel a heavenly bliss. That's because every higher vibration, so long as it's bearable, induces an exhilarating feeling of happiness. Then, however, the vibration becomes a torture because the nerves are unable to bear up under the excessive current. Lower vibrations than those of the individual concerned induce dejection, fear and dismay. If an average person, because of longing for the blissful state once experienced, could later reach the state of initiation into the fifth degree and reach it often through patient and persistent practice, the nerves and cells of his body would gradually become so inured and transformed that he could really raise himself by one step upward and actually become a genius. He would go on experiencing a steady flow of intuitive knowledge. 'The feeling of bliss connected with a higher state of consciousness is known to every person who is gifted with intuition, and everyone who drinks wine or uses other stimulants is seeking the same blissful feeling associated with a greater flow of current through the nerves. But the artificial stimulation is always followed by a depression which throws the person farther down than he was before. 'In the great initiation, all the currents of force corresponding to the seven levels of consciousness are conducted into the body, beginning with the lowest and moving progressively upward to the very highest divine creative currents. The candidate is initiated in all these forces and becomes conscious on all levels. For a candidate to be ready to go through this initiation and come out alive, his consciousness—and with it his power of resistance—must previously have reached the sixth level. For any creature whose consciousness had not attained this plane, the act of initiation would certainly mean death. 'In this way, with the help of the current of force, a candidate attains the seventh, divine degree which he never would have been able to reach alone. No one can attain initiation on the divine-creative plane through his own unaided efforts. Here he goes through the great transition from his previous— negative-taking attitude to a positive attitude of giving. Regardless of how much he may strive to do so, no human being can go through this transition alone and unaided, although many are able through their own efforts to develop to the point where they are perfectly prepared for initiation on the seventh plane. In such cases, the laying on of hands is all that is needed to initiate them into the divine cosmic-self-consciousness. Never again do such initiates fall out of divine consciousness, as they have moved through the entire cycle of total consciousness, acquiring all necessary experience as they did so, and only the reunion of their two complementary halves, each of which has become perfectly conscious—remains to be accomplished. Only this last help has to be given from the outside. From then on they live in a state of continual God-consciousness. 'Through Initiation in our temple, however, it's possible for candidates to be initiated into the divine seventh degree even though they may not have developed all the way up to the seventh degree in readiness for it. As a prerequisite for such initiation, they must have become conscious at least on the sixth plane, and they must have adequately prepared their body. Through this external aid of initiation, their path to the true self is opened, and in the act of initiation, their consciousness is linked up with the divine flow of power. 'These candidates are not able, after initiation, to continue living in the divine state of consciousness, They fall back to their previous state. But they remember the bliss they experienced in initiation, and as their path to God has been opened for them, they enjoy the possibility of attaining the seventh plane of development faster and easier than by merely following the long path of earthly experience and human development of consciousness. Initiation hi the temple is thus able to bring back many more people to the bliss of union with the divine self than would be possible without this aid. 'On the other hand there is a danger that a person initiated in this way, after his initiation and before he is able to become a God-man through his own efforts may not be able to resist earthly temptations and thus falls lower than in his first fall. This danger does not exist for the uninitiated. If, without initiation, a person completes his cycle of living along the long path of mortals all the way to the end, to the great goal, until he returns home to the Garden of Eden, there remains nothing in experience, nothing unknown in him. He achieves the divine plane after having gained experience on all levels, in this way gradually effacing his person. To achieve this, however, it takes a living creature an entire age of creation. 'It is God's will for the great initiation in the temple to continue to be available to mankind for some time to come in spite of this danger. Countless people have already been redeemed in this way and brought back to God, and many more will be. And the few who relapse after their initiation will reincarnate themselves in later times when mankind is left to its own resources. They will remember the great truths they experienced through their initiation and will proclaim these-truths to their fellow men in their words, writings and actions. 'The secret of the great initiation will be guarded hi the temple for some time yet. But when more and more earth-minded people come into power in times to come, we will close the initiation pyramid with blocks of stone from the inside and will dematerialize everything in the initiation chamber. The secret of divine creative energy will not fall into uninitiated hands. Thousands of years later when people break into the pyramids, they will find nothing— absolutely nothing—not even human skeletons. 'There are many souls on earth today who fulfil the prerequisites for the great initiation. It is our duty to initiate all of these candidates if, despite our warning, they repeat three times their wish to be initiated. 'In initiation the candidate becomes conscious on every plane of creation. All unconscious portions of his soul become conscious; he has no "subconscious" and no "superconscious". During his initiation, the consciousness of the initiate becomes whole, total all-consciousness. The circle which began with his becoming conscious in matter—in the body—the moment he fell from unity, is closed. The candidate consciously unites with his own complementary half which previously was always present as an unconscious portion of his soul, like a negative image, a strange being, and which because of its power of attraction manifested itself as longings, powerful urges and unrest in his body. The consciousness returns to unity, and there is no longer a complementary half, for the complementary half has also been made conscious. This reunion we call "mystic marriage". ' "Marriage" always means a union of positive and negative. On earth, however, "marriage" means the vain attempt to achieve union with another being in the body. But the mystic union of the spirit takes place in the consciousness and brings complete, never-ending fulfilment; for the union with one's own complementary half means union with God. The circle is closed again! 'The human body is so constructed that it contains a special nerve centre for each octave of vibration, On the one hand, these nerve centres are distributors, sending out through the nervous system the vibrations they receive from higher centres. On the other hand, they act as transformers when they pass on vibrations to the next nerve centre below. 'In the ordinary human being, these transformers in nerve centres work separately from his consciousness. That's why he can't control them. The laws of nature control him without his knowing what is taking place in his body and in his soul, in his subconscious. 'In his initiation, the candidate must consciously experience the high flow of current in all seven major nerve centres and the powers corresponding to them. With his consciousness he first descends to the lowest sphere of creation. He must experience the forces ruling there and become master of them. This is his first test. When he passes it successfully, he moves up one degree into the second octave of vibration, recognizing and experiencing it in order to master it. This is the second test. Then he climbs on into the third, fourth, fifth, sixth and finally into the seventh octave of vibration. When he has passed all these tests and succeeded in consciously remaining master in all these spheres—then he has become an initiate. 'Consciousness is light, unconsciousness is darkness. When we see light above us on earth, we say it's day. Thus each state of consciousness is a "day" of God; for in each consciousness, from the lowest plane of matter up to the God-man's consciousness of self, God recognizes himself on the different levels. On all these "days"—on all the levels of consciousness, there is activity, unrest, motion except on the seventh "day" of God when there is no activity, no motion, no work! On the seventh "day" creation ceases because on this day there is complete unity and perfect equilibrium. Then God rests within himself! 'When, after his initiation, an initiate succeeds in becoming conscious again in the eternal being and experiences this divine state again during his meditation, and when he succeeds often enough in thus raising himself by his own power from his normal sixth plane up to the seventh divine plane, in time he consolidates his position definitively on this level of consciousness, and the divine creative plane is the one he liven on day in and day out. Then and then only does he become a God-man, Only a person who, in his consciousness, is peace and calm itself, so that everything he does, thinks and feels flows forth naturally out of this divine state, manifesting God's will always and under all circumstances, always radiating only positive giving forces of divine love— only such a person is truly a Son of God, a God-man, Ptah-Hotep! 'The God-man consciously manifests and controls all seven levels of creation. But his consciousness identifies itself only with the seventh, divine plane, not with the lower ones. He knows them, masters them, uses them— but does not eat of these fruits of the tree of knowledge of good and evil! He consciously remains in God, in the paradisiacal state, He unites within himself all seven planes in divine unity: he is matter, has a body, is a plant: animates, nourishes and cares for his body as for a good instrument; he is animal: he has instincts and feelings; he is a man: he has intellect and the power of logical thought; he is a genius: he has intuition and works out of the plane of causes; he is a prophet: he stands above time and space, seeing the future and the past, loving the entire universe with selfless, all inclusive love, helping all creatures towards redemption from the fetters of the world; and he is a God-man: he is omniscient and omnipotent; he is what he is, the eternal being, life itself, God! 'Initiates, as you can see, are not all of the same degree. Most of them only reach the seventh degree after further development. That's why there are different degrees in the priesthood. The duties of a high priest can only be fulfilled by one who has reached the seventh degree of the God-man with his own power, no longer expecting and receiving the highest divine power—the way the candidate expects and receives it during his initiation. On the contrary, the high priest radiates and gives out this highest divine power himself. 'Six of the seven degrees of consciousness receive their creative vibrations, the power of life, from the seventh degree, from God. Even the initiate who has been able to reach the seventh divine degree only during his initiation, still expects and receives the creative power of life from the seventh degree, from God. Only God and those who have become identical with God are truly and exclusively munificent in their radiations. 'Matter, on the other hand, as a negative reflected image of God, only receives. 'All beings on the other levels receive from above and transmit to the levels below. The plant has a vitalizing effect on matter, while on the other hand it receives five-fold from the levels of intelligence above it. The animal gives off two-fold to the levels below it, while receiving three-fold from those above. Man gives three-fold towards the levels below him and receives three-fold from those above, as his consciousness stands in the middle of the seven planes. As the consciousness of the genius is on the fifth plane, the plane of causes, he radiates his creative powers out over the four levels below, while he receives power only from the two highest. The prophet—the initiate— transmits his beneficent vibrations to the beings on the five lower levels of consciousness and receives his power from the divine level. He still lives in a dualistic relationship with God. Only a person, who has attained perfect cosmic consciousness by his own efforts emits positive radiation, and only positive, in all directions, life-giving and munificent towards the entire universe. He lives in God, in monistic consciousness of self. 'You have already learned that giving—radiating—is the law of God, of the spirit, while taking—contraction—is the law of matter. 'Every frequency has a powerful and penetrating effect on the levels below it, whereas it has no effect on those above. If you take two people on different levels of development, the person on the lower level, although he may be a "bad" person in the view of people about him, can only harm the person on the higher level through deeds, but never through his radiation, as his powers have no effect on the levels above his. On the other hand, his radiation, especially his "evil eye" can do harm on the levels below his level of consciousness. An initiate, on the other hand, can transmit his high magic power to every living being without exception. 'During initiation, the divine creative power will flow through your spinal column, reaching each of your seven major nerve centres in turn, and you will experience this power as a state of consciousness on each level. But remember very carefully what I'm telling you now: When you become conscious in one octave and vibration, you are in tune with this frequency, and its whole sphere represents absolute "reality" for you. When you have passed the test in one degree, you will waken in the next sphere and realize that you were only dreaming on the level below. But if you don't pass the test, that is, if you identify yourself with the events and don't succeed in remaining master of them, all of these dream pictures remain real for you, and you'll have to experience all of them to the very end as real events in the world of time and space. That would mean that your body would die here in this coffin and you would have to go on dreaming your own dream pictures in countless reincarnations, on the long path of mortal existence, for many thousands of years while you gradually struggled upward from this lower level to which you would have fallen. 'The difference between dream and reality is only that what you accept on one level of consciousness as reality immediately turns into a dream when you awaken on a higher level of consciousness and realize that it wasn't reality at all, but merely a projection of the self, in other words a dream. Every dream is reality as long as you believe it to be real. The one and only reality, the only objective reality there is, is the self: God! 'When you pass all the tests, you experience all the lives that you would have to experience as a fallen soul on earth. Free of time and space, you experience them as dreams, awakening on the next level of consciousness. Finally you awaken on the seventh level, in the cosmic consciousness of the self. In this divine state, you become one with the last unit highest and only reality, with yourself, with God. This is no longer an awakening, but a resurrection! 'Then you have been liberated from your "person"—which also is only a projection—liberated from your personal fate. You are redeemed. After that you will fulfil the duties of a priestess in the temple. Then, if through further practice you succeed in raising yourself up to the seventh level through your own efforts, keeping yourself his level as a permanent state of consciousness, you will have attained the divinity of a God-person. Then you will be worthy to become a high priestess in the temple.' 'Father of my Soul,' I ask Ptahhotep, 'you've told me that it's possible for a person to fall from the higher consciousness even after he has been initiated. You've also told me that the initiate, when he identifies himself with his body and thus channels his higher energies into his body, falls lower than an ordinary person living in physical reality. Another thing you've told me is that a candidate, during his initiation, experiences his whole future destiny, just as it has been provided for from the moment of his first fall all the way back up to his return home into divine unity. So how is it possible for an initiate, who has dreamed all the events and trials and temptations of his destiny and who has, during his initiation, successfully passed all the tests that might later cause him to fall again—how is it possible for such an initiate to fall later in the three-dimensional world of time and space? If he has seen his entire destiny all the way to the end as a dream, why hasn't he also dreamed about his fall as part of his future destiny?' 'When a boomerang is thrown out,' answers Ptahhotep, 'how it will fly and how long it will take to complete its circuit are factors that are already known the moment it's thrown. So it carries within itself its entire career as an immutable future fate. It would be possible however, for an external force to catch it in the middle of its orbit and bring it back to its starting point and goal in shorter time and by a shorter path. The boomerang would thus have returned home. But because it maintains its original form and weight, it still carries within itself the possibility of being thrown out again and making another circuit, because this possibility is given by virtue of its form and weight. 'An initiate who has attained initiation by means of external aid resembles this boomerang. He has dreamed his entire future destiny out to the end, to his return into divine unity, but he has experienced these conditions only in his consciousness. His person and his personal circumstances, which arise from his character and fate, still remain in the material world. With his initiation, he has not ended his present life, just as you, after your initiation, will still be the daughter of the Pharaoh and the representative of the Queen. And if an initiate has not gathered all the necessary earthly experience before his initiation, if he has not got acquainted with all the creative forces within himself and learned to control them, he is to some extent still inexperienced when he returns home into the divine state of unity. This means that he is not yet completely liberated from the personal composition of his powers and his personality is not yet completely annihilated. 'During the intervening time until such an initiate is able to reach the seventh degree by his own efforts and maintain himself in it as a perpetual state of consciousness, he carries within himself the possibility and the danger of falling again from his high stale of consciousness and starting on a completely new wheel of destiny. Because he has become conscious in the divine creative power, however, even though with external aid, this tremendous power throws him out again, and then he must go through a much larger cycle than was the case after his first fall before he became conscious in the divine power. The black magicians, for example, who destroyed the home of the sons of God have fallen to the lowest plane of creation. They now lie as mountains, rocks and stones on the earth and must work their way up through ages and ages along the path of consciousness from inert matter through the realms of plant and animal life, up to the human level again. Some of them fell only as far as the plant or animal level, while others fell only to one of the other levels of human existence. The course a creature runs through in the material world takes a definite amount of time, but individual creatures can always run through the circle in a shorter time and reach their goal thousands or even millions of years earlier. This, however, is only possible for man. Only man, thanks to his conscious use of intellect, can experience states of consciousness without reference to time. Animals and plants are not able to do this. Now you can understand why animals too must suffer! Like everything else on earth, they are limited manifestations of consciousness of fallen spirits that once lived on a high plane. 'In the initiation all the negative forces that were made manifest in the fall from a higher level of consciousness are offset by positive forces. The "debts" are thus paid. After you have successfully passed your initiation, you'll enter a condition without fate. As long as you manifest God's will, you will have no person of your own and consequently no fate of your own. You will be free of the law of action and reaction. But if you identify yourself in your consciousness with your person, with your body, you'll create a new wheel of fate for yourself and again be subject to innumerable reincarnations. 'Now you know all the consequences of initiation. And I'm asking you again one last time, do you have the courage to go through with initiation?' With perfect self-assurance, I answer, 'Yes!' A tall, dignified man then enters the room. I know him. He is a priest of the highest degree, a high priest too, Ptahhotep's representative. He steps over towards us. Then Ptahhotep motions to me to get into the sarcophagus and lie down in it. I do as he commands. As I lie in the sarcophagus, Ptahhotep casts a last glance at me, full of infinite love, and then the two priests lift the stone cover and lay it over me. In pitch darkness I lie there enclosed in the stone coffin. |
