Читать книгу Edgar Cayce's Tales of Ancient Egypt - John Van Auken - Страница 9

In ancient times a mega-flood, an eruption of a super-volcano, a succession of powerful earthquakes, and a shower of fiery meteorites brought an end to the mythological lands of Lemuria (Mu) in the Pacific Ocean and Atlantis in the Atlantic. According to Cayce’s visions, remnants of these prehistoric peoples migrated to safe lands and played a role in the rise of new civilizations, including the extraordinary people of ancient Egypt.

Egyptian legends tell of receding floodwaters and the descent of the “Heron from Heaven”—it was called the Bennu bird, the phoenix of Egyptian lore (see illustration 2). According to this legend, the Bennu bird was the soul of the sun god Ra (likely pronounced ray, occasionally spelled Re). The soul of Ra in the form of the Heron from Heaven landed on the primordial Ben-ben mound that rose from the inundation of the chaos occurring in the latter period of the First Creation. Upon landing, the Bennu cried out: “I am the Bennu bird, the Heart-Soul of Ra, the Guide of the Gods to the Duat.” The Duat is the underworld in Egyptian teachings, the land of the night—corresponding to the subconscious realms of our minds, lying just beneath daily consciousness behind a veil that separates our earthly awareness from our soulful, heavenly consciousness. The Bennu’s cry marked the beginning of the Second Creation.

The drying Ben-ben mound upon which the Bennu settled was in the ancient land of On, a place known today as Heliopolis, “City of the Sun,” near modern-day Cairo. In this manner the light of heaven came to Earth; thus Egypt was born from the ashes of the First Creation.

This tale may be compared to the biblical first creation of Adam and the lands he and his families knew. Then, when the first creation spread darkness, filling in the hearts and minds with all manner of evil, the Great Flood cleansed away the first creation, as described in Genesis 6. After this cleansing the biblical story tells of a new beginning with Noah and his families—thus began the second creation.

Edgar Cayce’s visions contain many detailed stories of ancient, prehistoric times filled with dates, events, and named people. His Egyptian narrative begins with a strange tale about a discarnate soul looking for just the right opportunity to begin anew during the Second Creation. This soul’s mind scanned the recovering planet from beyond the veil of material consciousness, and it saw that migrants from the former lands and peoples of Og were now living on and around Mt. Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is thought to have landed. Mt. Ararat is in modern-day Turkey. Og was one of the principle regions of Atlantis, according to Cayce, and the area known today as that of the American plateaus or the north portion of the US state of New Mexico and the surrounding highlands today. These migrants from Atlantis retained the spiritual ideals of the earlier children of the Law of One, as Cayce called them, indicating that they retained the belief that an unseen oneness connects all life. The Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples have a legend of the children of God wrestling with the Lords of the Underworld to win the deadly game between the dark and the light. This remnant group, now in Ararat, were seeking to make a new life and a better world by subduing the vices and confusions of their Atlantean experience while holding on to their virtues and higher wisdom.

The celestial soul observing them through the veil intuitively knew that this Ararat clan would eventually come down out of the great mountain and surrounding lands, enter the region we know as Egypt, and begin the wondrous era of creativity, productivity, and enlightenment we see in surviving Egyptian temples, pyramids, papyruses, and statuary. This was the opportunity that the extraterrestrial soul was seeking. However, knowing that a prophet has little honor in his own tribe, the soul searched beyond the Ararat clan for a way to come to these people from another group.

Cayce’s vision described a people in the Far East known as the tribe of Zu, in what would be known today as the high plateaus of the Mongolian lands. These people were also refugees of the destruction of the First Creation, but they were from sunken Lemuria in the Pacific. Strangely, these people, and those in India, had ideals and sacred rituals that would eventually become a part of Egypt’s early culture. Among the Zu clan was a daughter of their leader whose body, heart, and mind were perfect for the incarnation of this powerful, celestial soul. Her name was Arda. She was a pure, selfless portal into this world; thus, with love and idealism, the celestial spirit overshadowed the young girl and persuaded her deeper self and the very cells of her body to yield to his coming. Having a more fourth dimensional mind and heart, Arda responded, and the spark of the Spirit of Life quickened her three-dimensional womb. Though a virgin, having known no human man, she conceived a new and ideal physical body through which the celestial soul could incarnate into this terrestrial world to fulfill its grand mission.

Arda was exhilarated by the new life within her, yet she was uncertain how her people would receive the news. Hopeful, she explained to them what had happened. Unfortunately, her kinsmen could not share in her belief in a celestial conception. They drove her from the tribe in shame. Her father—confused by his ready-to-believe-anything love for her and yet his rigid hold to the laws of his tribe and the realities of this physical world—stood motionless as she was driven off.

Cayce details how she journeyed westward—not by some thought-out plan but by an inner, intuitive push west. Eventually, she camped near the tribe living on and around Mt. Ararat (biblical Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey, see illustration 3). The Ararats (remnant Atlanteans) had no love for the tribe of Zu (remnant Lemurians), so Arda was not welcomed, only tolerated. However, when her child was born and his beauty was perceived by the people of Ararat, she was tolerated a little better. The child grew in stature and wisdom, revealing a knowing that quickly identified him as a prophet, a seer. In one of the young boy’s pronouncements, he prophesied the entrance of this clan into the rich lands of Egypt and that they would build one of the grandest cultures on the planet. King Arart (pronounced aur-art), the elderly leader of the tribe, was moved by this prophecy and began to hold the boy in high esteem, giving comfort and support to him and to his mother. She had suffered much for her celestial conception, but now the fruit of her womb rewarded her. From this moment on, Arda was an honored woman; she and her offspring were fully adopted into the Ararat community.

Cayce described how her boy was of unusual coloring; his skin being lighter than his mother’s, his hair the color of the sun, and there was a radiant mystique about him. Because of these features, the people named him Ra-Ta, meaning something akin to “sunlight upon the land.”

Young Ra-Ta’s remarkable prophetic abilities naturally made him the priest of the tribe. At the age of twenty-one, he led King Arart and his whole clan down out of the mountain region, across the plains, and into the fertile lands of Egypt (see illustration 3 for a map). Egypt was then called the Black Land (Kemet, KMT). This was because of the rich black silt that the Nile had left behind as it receded from its flood stages. According to Cayce’s story, some nine hundred souls composed this invading horde. A small number today, but this was that biblical time when the planet had been cleansed of many earlier peoples by a karmic reaction to their evil (again, read Genesis 6). Now the planet was being repopulated for a new start. This was the beginning of the Second Creation.

Naturally, the sight of a horde of northern mountain people marching toward their land of ease and plenty was upsetting to the natives of the Black Land, especially to their upper class who enjoyed a life of luxury and leisure. However, the natives had once been invaders themselves, having entered this rich land from the southern mountains of Nubia. Though they were strong then, they had grown comfortable and satisfied for a very long time. Their newfound land required little labor and provided plenty of recreation and sunshine. Adding to the natives’ softness was the laid-back passivity of their leader, King Raai (pronounced Raa-ee). He had become old and weary of the demands of rulership and thus, surrendered much of his power to the people, wanting to be left alone with his personal pursuits. Even when petitioned by his people to build up the defenses of the country and create a defense plan against the northern mountain invaders, King Raai simply refused to do so. However, he did call for a meeting with the invading king to discuss terms for peaceful co-existence of the two populations. During a series of these meetings, King Raai became enamored with one of the more beautiful Ararat women, seeking her company and companionship rather than actively participating in detailed meetings about the country and co-rulership. King Arart, seeing this native king’s disinterest in power, might, and rulership, concluded that his clan could just march into the heart of the Black Land and take over. And that is just what he did, but not violently. Amazingly, the natives put up little to no resistance. That is until the new landlords set up laws and taxes.

In the telling of this story, Cayce sadly stated that King Raai “gave over the activities of the land for the beauty of a woman.” But paradoxically, Cayce found some good in King Raai, noting that he originally had “brought to that land the study of the relationships of man to the Creative Energy” and that his disposition against bloodshed and war was admirable. In this current situation, this led him to seek a peaceful solution, even though he got lost in the arms of the beautiful Ararat woman, leaving his people at the mercy of King Arart. Cayce even noted that this disposition of King Raai was not simply submission but was based in his principle of nonviolence and that this disposition “became the basis for the studies of the Prince of Peace.” Curiously, Raai’s peace principle so affected the invading Ararat people that they established schools in the land to help both tribes better understand one another.

This is not to say that all of the people of Ararat agreed with their king. Many were very upset about this, wanting instead to drive the natives back into the Nubian hills from whence they came. In an effort to temper these feelings, King Arart quickly arranged for special educators to go throughout his tribe explaining the ideal of peaceful co-existence and its benefits to the clan in this land of plenty for everyone. These educators were successful, except for a few pockets of discontent and violence.

There was roughly a three-year settling-in period that followed the initial invasion and terms of peace. During this time it was clear that the natives did not seek to establish order, laws, or governmental structure. They did not want to organize the labor force and talent of their people. They enjoyed the bounty of their land and its sunshine and fair weather. Conversely, the northern mountain people were intent on building a rich culture guided by high standards and driven by specific goals. The Ararats wanted to develop the resources of this land: its mountain minerals, gems, and gold, the energy of its great river as well as the power of the people’s labor and skill. King Arart began establishing laws, developing an infrastructure, creating schools and training centers, and organizing production teams. But he also used the ever-popular means by which a society builds and sustains itself: he raised taxes. Tensions rose between the two very different peoples.

Curiously, among the natives was a scribe-sage who explained to his people the aims of the Ararat rulers, encouraging his people to participate and invest themselves in a united effort. The young scribe-sage traveled around his people’s communities explaining the mental and spiritual ideas that drove the invaders to do what they were doing, describing their values and philosophies, and how they wanted cultural and artistic development as well as wealth building. The Ararat people were not a community of leisure and materialism, as the natives were.

News of this native scribe’s teachings reached the ear of King Arart and his councilors. They demanded regular briefings on the scribe’s teachings, concerned about his potential to become the natives’ missing leader, replacing distracted Raai. It quickly became obvious that this scribe-sage was articulate, clever, and growing in power and influence among his people. Thus, in another clever decision, King Arart appointed his young, bright, and energetic son to be acting king while Arart stepped into the background, retaining a powerful role on the Inner Council. In a move reminiscent of his father’s peaceful coexistence, the newly appointed young king selected the native scribe-sage to become councilor on the Ruling Council, raising him from scribe to high councilor. To further establish the scribe’s position in the ruling party, the young king changed the name of the scribe to Aarat (pronounce ah-rat), thus making him one of the overseeing Ararats.

With the blending of the two peoples through these wise moves with the influential native scribe-sage, the young king then appointed his father’s favorite seer Ra-Ta to the post of High Priest of all the land and peoples.

Some time after these moves, a migrating group of Atlanteans arrived directly from Poseidia, the last vestige of Atlantis to sink. The Inner Council of the Black Land decided to include some of these Atlanteans on the Governing Council. However, a few of these Atlanteans tried briefly to dominate the Council but were quickly moved off into lesser roles while more cooperative Atlanteans were appointed in their place. Now the land had three groups of people cooperating for the good of all. Eventually, others would come, even people from faraway Zu. The old Ararat king, the young king, and their Inner Council accepted leaders from each group that arrived to serve on the Governing Council, making early Egypt a most unusual nation. As the word of this cooperative governance spread around the renewing planet, many tribes sent emissaries to see and report on this strange and rare arrangement.

With the Governing Council established, the culture grew. This was not a huge population of millions as we are used to today. A few thousand people composed the entire community of budding Egypt. In fact, the entire planet’s population was very small in comparison with today’s. Cayce actually gave the number to be 133 million! This is an amazingly small number given today’s nearly seven billion population.

The Cayce readings tell how there were no families, as we know them today. The people lived in groups. Many of the females of the tribes were housed for the evening in buildings connected with the temples while many of the males were housed in buildings connected with the palaces. The females were the channels of incarnating souls to grow the nation while the males were the muscle to run, build, and defend the society. The living quarters were laid out in tiered layers, like a step pyramid. Each hall had three-to-four-tiered floors. The private sleeping rooms were small, monastic-like cells, 7′ x 9′ with 8′ to 10′ ceilings. All items, such as blankets, rugs, and linens, were handmade.

These tiered halls of private rooms were connected to huge chambers in the center of the structure for group gatherings assembled for the purposes of education, exercise, special ceremonies, services, and recreation. There were special halls and chambers for conceiving, birthing, and raising children—these were very active in those times for growing the population was a high priority. There were also special halls and chambers for initiations into the sacred teaching and ceremonies. There were halls for conducting the training to produce skilled workers, artisans, and educators needed to build and sustain this growing society. According to Cayce, the buildings were designed and built to demonstrate the three types of relationships: individuals to individuals, individuals to the creative forces through personal attunement to the divine and cosmic forces, and masses of individuals to the creative forces during group gatherings for attunement. God was an integral part of everyday life, as revealed in the extant carvings, paintings, and writings we have of the ancient Egyptians.

According to Cayce, Ra-Ta’s spiritual focus and the king’s secular focus allowed for the first intentional and cooperative separation of church and state. Cayce said that each person received one gold piece for a day’s work, from the king to the growers of grain. All shared equally. There was a national spirit and purpose among these early people, despite some differences in ideas and purposes.

Ra-Ta oversaw the building of temples while the king oversaw the building of palaces, monuments, dwellings, and storehouses. The young king opened mines in the mountains of Nubia and as far away as Ophir (biblically called Kadesh, today called Persia or Iran). These mines brought huge quantities of gold, silver, iron, lead, zinc, copper, tin, and the like into the coffers and smelting facilities of Egypt. Stonemasons were trained. Quantities of granite, limestone, and sandstone were quarried and prepared for the massive building projects.

The high priest gathered a team around him to manage the services in the temples. His innate celestial awareness helped him find priests and priestesses who could accept the ideas of unseen worlds beyond this physical world and metaphysical concepts of the mind and spirit rather than just the body and matter. He sought those who intuitively sensed the existence of and were willing to use pathways and centers within the physical body to develop their metaphysical consciousness and abilities. He sought those who accepted that there were activities that occurred between incarnate lives and that this bigger view of soul life needed to become a part of one’s whole experience rather than only viewing one’s existence to be a personal, physical life. He sought those who could accept and would use opportunities for soul activity in the higher realms during sleep cycles, dreaming states, and deep meditations.

Ra-Ta was teaching that this inner life was important and worth knowing and developing. However, most of the natives held more strongly to the material outer life and the enjoyment of it rather than seeking some unseen inner life. The natives of the Black Land were a materialistic people. Ra-Ta brought a new teaching, one difficult to comprehend from a strictly worldly perspective. Even so, the people remembered how he had manifested remarkable abilities during his early years in the Black Land and how he had led people on archaeological expeditions that found very ancient artifacts of First Creation peoples. His reputation grew, and many natives not only began to listen to him but also attempted to understand his strange ideas and mystical practices. Adding to this was the support of the high priest by their scribe-sage, who helped the people appreciate the high priest’s ideas and methods.

Ra-Ta taught that prior to the evolution of matter, there was an involution into matter from out of pure spirit and energy and that there was a deeper part of each person that was spirit, energy, and mind, living beyond and within the body. He gathered a little band of what we would call today archaeologists. He had them uncover archaeological evidence to support his teachings about the lost history that would demonstrate the existence of the children of God, the fallen angels of the Nephilim, and humanlike beings of the First Creation that were the ancestors of the incarnate people in this Second Creation. These archaeological artifacts of spiritual realities caused many to come to him to learn more. Some of them even committed themselves to the rigors of his temple training and initiations.

In the temples, exercises for increasing spiritual awareness and attunement to the universal forces were taught and practiced. Several stages of initiation and enlightenment were established. Aspiring priests and priestesses proceeded to advance through these body-changing, mind-changing courses and tests.

The early phases of training were in a place Cayce called the “Temple of Sacrifice,” where cleansings and purifications were the focus, mostly relating to perfecting the body as an ideal temple for the soul and soul’s mind. Here the metaphysical channels and centers within the human body were activated and utilized. These channels are known in yoga as the sushumna, ida, and pingala, and the centers are referred to as chakras and lotuses. Activating these was a goal of temple training. But in some bodies there needed to first be a correction or cleansing because these had become contaminated or dysfunctional through misuse or abuse in earlier incarnations.

The next phases of training were in a place Cayce called the “Temple Beautiful.” In this temple spiritual enlightenment and attunement to celestial forces were the focus as well as becoming aware of and enlivening each soul’s unique purpose for incarnating and thus, discovering his or her mission or career in this incarnation.

It was believed that the body, when cleansed and trained, could help the soul and mind maintain a connection with the heavenly influences while doing good in the earthly realm. The concept that the human body is designed for both physical and metaphysical experiences was known in these very ancient times as evidenced by a much later text, the Yoga Sutra by Patanjali. He wrote down what was previously passed on orally in the ancient temples. His treatise explained that within the human body are pathways and energy centers that may be stimulated in such a manner as to bring about nonphysical consciousness. Patanjali (pronounced pa-tan-ja-lee) published the secrets of our bodies and showed how to use these to experience altered states of consciousness—something that had, heretofore, been exclusive to the initiates in temple life.

Patanjali explained the most fundamental principle: a unity happens when an entity realizes its oneness with the Source and expanse of life with the Whole. He explained that the “unity happens when there is stilling of the movement of thought. In the light of stillness . . . self is not confused or confined. Then, the seer or the harmonized intelligence—which is ignorantly regarded as the separate experiences of sensations and emotions, and the separate performer of actions—is not split up into one or the other of the states or modifications of the mind.” (Samadhi Pada 1, Sutras 1-10)

Thus, according to Patanjali, union occurs when an individual perceives that he or she is not simply an individual, but also universal and one with the Whole, the All. This is realized in the deepest stillness when the form-shaping, identity-focused mind is quiet, clear, and alert. Then the inner and the outer are united. In Sanskrit yoga actually means union.

In addition to these training phases, Ra-Ta’s temples developed life-changing ceremonies on and around altars. The altars were prepared according to inner guidance. They included sacrificial altars and beautification altars. They did not sacrifice animals, birds, beasts, reptiles, grains, or humans on these altars. That came much later after this early connection to God-consciousness was diminished by further immersion into physicality and earthliness. According to Cayce, these earlier altars sacrificed individual’s faults and weaknesses, blotting them out with “the fires of the unseen forces” that were set in motion by attunement to the powers of the Spirit.

On one of my many trips to Egypt, I experienced “the fires of the unseen forces” while meditating in the seventh chamber of the Seti Temple in Abydos. Here’s the experience:

My group and I sat on the cold, hard stone floor in this very special chamber and began to still our minds and bodies for meditation. The guards at the temple were laughing and talking; the echo of their voices was so great inside the temple that it was very difficult to meditate. However, rather than give up or get angry I asked myself, “When was I ever going to get back to this temple?” I told myself that I had to succeed now. Then, I tried with all my might to filter out their voices and get into deep meditation. It worked. It worked so well that I not only lost consciousness of them, I completely lost consciousness of the temple and my group, entering into a vivid ancient Egyptian ceremony. It was an initiation ceremony involving water and fire. I found myself standing shoulder-deep in a pool of holy water, naked. I somehow knew it was a purification ritual. As I walked up the stone steps out of this sacred pool, attending priests wrapped a floor-length cape around me. They then anointed my head with oil and combed my hair back. My hair was black and thick with oil. Two of them approached and handed me the two scepters of Egypt, the crook and the flail (see illustration 4). Somehow, I intuitively knew that if I wanted to move, I had to hold them out in front of me; to stop, I had to cross them over my chest. I looked up and beheld a line of ancient Egyptians out in front of me. I tilted the two scepters toward them, causing me to glide across the floor, not walk, glide just an inch above the floor. It was an exhilarating feeling to glide so effortlessly. In front of me were two long rows of priests and gods: a row on my left and another on my right. I glided between them. They nodded their heads and smiled approvingly. At least at first I thought this was approval, but as I nodded back, I realized that it was also a nod of encouragement to continue through the next phase of the initiation. I looked up ahead of them to see what was at the end of the rows. To my amazement and concern, it was the sun, the real sun! At the end of this gauntlet of priests and gods, I was to enter the fire of Ra. But this Ra was the real sun that would burn me to a crisp. I looked hard into the eyes of the priests and gods, expressing to them with my eyes my deep concern about this part of the initiation. They smiled and nodded with more enthusiasm than before. I knew that all I had to do was cross the scepters and I would stop. But some knowing within me kept the scepters pointed straight toward the fiery sun. As I enter it, I felt the searing heat, but instead of burning me, it cleansed me! The Ra fire was burning away all my sins and weaknesses but not harming the rest of me. So happy was I that I began to draw its heat into me, inhaling it, wanting more of it. It felt wonderful! I wanted it to burn me completely, thoroughly, until I was fully cleansed! Suddenly, someone grabbed my arm and began shaking me saying, “John, wake up; we’re going to miss our boat. We have to go. Wake up.” I struggled to see through the sun’s brilliant light. Two faces were staring back at me; they were our Egyptian guide and my colleague. I asked, “Who are you?” After they both looked at each other, they then turned and ordered me to get up, follow them closely, and not say anything that would alarm the guards and others in our group. I obeyed, gradually realizing that I was supposed to be a part of this tour group, yet half of me was still in the initiation ceremony. Once on the bus to the boat, I fell back into the solar cleansing. Oh, it felt so good to be so clean!

Later, when reading Cayce’s discourses on Egypt, I came across this fire altar portion of the ancient Egyptian initiation in the temples of Ra-Ta. I felt both elated to have somehow experienced the initiation firsthand (if that is what I experienced) and a bit spooked to know that the ancient events were so accessible. But then Cayce also taught that all time is one time and nothing is ever lost. It is still there in the deeper levels of consciousness. All one has to do is access it with the right intention.

In another experience while in a deep state of consciousness, I woke in a stone chamber in an ancient Egyptian temple. Upon a stone altar was a person reclining on his back, waiting for a chakra adjustment! I know how weird this sounds, but this is how the scene opened. What’s even stranger is the fact that it felt so real that I lost all awareness of anything else. I was in this room, standing next to this altar. I approached the person lying on the altar and reached my hands over his heart area. I was wearing a floor-length cape and a high, cylindrical hat, similar to that worn by Amun-Ra (see illustration 5). Somehow I intuitively knew that the cape was to shield me from any interfering or contaminating influences and that the hat was an antenna-like device which channeled the energies of Venus through me! Yes, the planet! These energies were those of the typical astrological characteristics attributed to Venus: love, art (creativity), and beauty. As these influences flowed through me, they entered into the person’s heart chakra. As they did, it was as if dials in his heart chakra were being turned so as to better tune his heart to the frequency coming from the planet of love, art, and beauty.

Perhaps this is why I’m writing this book on Cayce’s Egypt. It is as if my soul knows that ancient place and time and has some lingering energies that have to find their way out of me today. My intention in sharing these experiences with you is to give possible examples of what Cayce was conveying about these ancient temples and the activities of the initiates and for us to consider the unseen influences of these experiences that are latent within us even today.

Now back to the highlights of Cayce’s story of Ra-Ta and the temples (a later chapter on the temples goes into this topic in greater detail).

When these cleansings in the temples were combined with the inner guidance to commit oneself to a specific career of service, one could then make great leaps forward in freedom from earthliness and limited consciousness to become a light to this world. This was done only after the seekers had chosen to give themselves to these services. No one was forced into the temples, and once in the temples, no one was forced to progress through the various stages. Each had to choose or be “called” from within to participate and endure.

The Temple of Sacrifice may be compared to the combination of one of our best hospitals merged with one of our best health spas and yoga centers. Restructuring and cleansing the body could employ several means: from surgeries to scented baths, from chemistry and potions to massage and body movement (likely similar to Tai Chi) or dance, from painful change through physical therapy to nirvanic transformation that would alter the very cells and hormones of the body.

The Temple Beautiful may be compared to the combination of one of our highly creative and idealistic universities, one of our most loving, monastery-type religious facilities, and one of our prayer and meditation centers.

The Temple of Sacrifice transformed the body and body-mind. The Temple Beautiful transformed participants mentally and spiritually. It combined body, mind, and soul development with service to God, to one another, and to the world. The program was not reclusive or elitist. Whether one was channeled to work in the sacred services of the altars or the daily labors of the granary, both were seen as divinely manifesting his or her ultimate potential to magnify God in life rather than escape life to be with God. Godliness in this early training was an active service, not a static state. Works were as important as faith and enlightenment.

According to Cayce’s readings, the purpose for all of this was: “That there might be a closer relationship of individuals to the Creator, and a better relationship of individuals with one another.”

Despite many gains, Ra-Ta struggled with disappointment and discouragement. He was in a constant wrestling match with earthly ideals held by many of the people. Incarnate souls easily slipped into the comforts of living only the material life and gratifying physical appetites and egotistical longings. Some people also sought to control others as subordinates, even slaves, for their own use, which did not fit with Ra-Ta’s ideal of one God and one family of the children of God, all equal siblings. Many of these negative ideals and pursuits had caused the end of the First Creation. Ra-Ta and his team wanted to prevent these selfish, earthly energies from contaminating the Second Creation.

At the height of Ra-Ta’s influence as the high priest, he was also traveling to other sacred centers around the planet. How? By flying! Amazingly, according to Cayce’s readings, there was a time long ago when flight was a natural means of transportation—we’ll learn more about this in the chapter on ancient flight. According to Cayce’s visions, the entire planet had major spiritual centers with temples and pyramids. In addition to Egypt there were centers in what today would be called Iran (Persia), India, the Gobi (not a desert then), Indochina, China, the Pacific Islands, the Andes, Mexico, the plateaus of New Mexico, and even Scandinavia (the land of Odin and Thor). There was much communication among these spiritual centers, each sharing how best to keep the celestial wisdom alive despite souls moving deeper into matter and terrestrial existence.

Ra-Ta met with leaders of these other centers—some actually visited the Egyptian temples—some were even initiated. There was no language barrier according to Cayce’s readings because this was a time when there was one language among all the people of the planet. The biblical Tower of Babel event had not yet occurred.

It was a busy, dynamic time.

Cayce gave a description of Ra-Ta: “The priest in body . . . was six feet one inch tall, weighing a hundred and eighty-one pounds. He was fair of face, not too much hair on the head [lost much of his youthful, yellow hair by this time] or too much on the face or body. In color nearly white, only sun or air tanned.” We know from artifacts that most Egyptian priests had shaved heads though they could and did wear wigs, and they all dressed in spotted leopard skins (see illustration 6a and 6b). Since there are no leopards in the Mayan, Toltec, and Aztec lands, their priests wore jaguar skins.

As powerful and influential as the high priest was in these formative times, he became more powerful and influential after he stumbled. Ra-Ta’s standing in Egypt took a sudden and unexpected turn for the worse. He allowed himself to break one of his own rules. And even though it was for a seemingly higher purpose, the king and council members did not see it that way. The punishment was severe, perhaps too severe.

Cayce’s readings tell the story of the fall of Ra-Ta as a combination of temptation and trickery. Some of his subordinate priests had become jealous of the high priest’s power and weary of his demands on them. They plotted a way to bring him down from his lofty pedestal and powerful control over them. Actually, Ra-Ta was more vulnerable than may have been imagined. Much time had passed since those early days of founding Egypt, the old king of the Ararats who loved Ra-Ta had retired, his son was now overseeing the kingdom, and the country was flush with wealth and excitement. Ra-Ta had succeeded and was enjoying his success. It felt to him that he could do anything because he was now above the laws and rules. He was supreme; there was no one above him. This gave him a feeling of absolute freedom and independence. The plot to bring him down couldn’t have come at a better time, and the scheme was developed around a practice in the temples that was ripe for misuse.

In these early times, repopulating the earth after the major disasters that ended the First Creation had almost wiped away the entire population of the planet. Baby making was among the highest priorities; there was an active baby-making process going on in sections of the temples. Not only did they need to grow the population, but they also wanted to create the most ideal bodies and thereby draw the most enlightened souls into those bodies. In illustration 7 there is an Egyptian scene showing a woman holding a “ba,” a soul from out of heaven’s crowded soul communities—revealing how active the birthing activities were. The baby-making operation in the temples carefully selected males and females for their genetic qualities and their spiritual ideals. The high priest had established a long and careful procedure that everyone was to go through before being coupled with one another to copulate and conceive. Among the ideal females in the main temple was one named Isris (pronounced ice-ris). Her mind and body were as perfect as any in all the land. Additionally, one of her skills was dancing—not sensual dancing but movement to music that would uplift observers’ hearts and minds as well as her own. The new young king who had taken over for his father was very fond of Is-ris and her dancing. He also considered her to be among the most ideal birthing partners, capable of producing excellent offspring if mated with the right male—and surely the young pharaoh would be on any short list of ideal mates for Is-ris.

The temple priests knew of the king’s admiration for Is-ris so if they could pit the young king against the high priest, the high priest would lose, despite his elite status. This was because there would be no changing of the bloodline of the kings, so the Zu-born high priest would be the one to go.

The conniving priests first threatened Is-ris and her family into cooperating with the seduction of the high priest; then they convinced Ra-Ta that he was the most ideal of all men, and since the purpose was to seek the most ideal offspring, he was the best mate for Is-ris, this most perfect female.

Stumbling over a long-developing sense of his own power as well as the resulting vanity, Ra-Ta did not go through the established procedures for such an important mating and broke his own rule about the number of wives a priest could have. He took Is-ris and conceived a child with her. The fruit of their love was concealed for a time in the temple, but when the king finally heard about it, he was furious. A beautiful and wise flower had been abruptly taken from the kingdom without going through the necessary steps to ensure the highest good, and this by a priest who was already wed. This was a terrible injustice that could not be undone. And though Ra-Ta thought that he was above the rules, the council and the king did not. The king reacted swiftly and severely. Since the child was illegal, the king removed her from the temple and put her under the control of palace authorities and a caretaker. Then the king and his army banished Ra-Ta, Is-ris, and 231 of their supporters from the land of Egypt—forever!

Disgraced, confused, and despairing, Ra-Ta and his little band of loyal supporters left Egypt. Initially they entered the lands of Lybia, where the priest drew a lot of attention, gaining converts to his teachings and practices. Subsequently, he and his entourage journeyed to the high mountains of Abyssinia (modern day Ethiopia) and later into the mountains of Nubia (the area today that is Upper Egypt, Aswan, and the Lake Nasser region). Here they set up their community. (See illustration 8 for a map of ancient Egypt.)

Cayce’s discourses tell how Is-ris and Ra-Ta did not waste their time in these mountains but set about to make the best of a bad situation. Ra-Ta, sobered by his disastrous mistake, was determine to gain higher consciousness and oneness with the Infinite, Eternal Creator. He and his troop regularly entered deep meditation, making passage through dimensions of higher consciousness. They practiced moving from individualness to universalness, from finiteness to infinite oneness with the cosmos and the universal consciousness. Cayce stated that Ra-Ta “awakened to the Ra within him” and Is-ris “awakened to the Isis with her.” Cayce also described how they gained conscious awareness of the cosmos and earth’s relationship to the universe and the universal forces. They even received knowledge of the ideal location to build one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Great Pyramid of Giza—they even received instructions on how to build it! Of course, they asked the universal consciousness how would this be possible since they were living under a lifetime banishment from Giza (Cayce’s readings spelled it Gizeh). They came to understand that their expulsion would not be forever. And sure enough, events were not going well in Egypt during their exile. Two rebellions had shaken the once harmonious nation: one among the natives against the Ararats and another led by the young king’s own brother against the kingdom! Furthermore, except for a very few priests (one of whom we will read about later), the temple leaders were not as spiritually aware or as mystically powerful as Ra-Ta. Without Ra-Ta’s control, some of the priests were actually using techniques and potions to arouse earthly energies and urges rather than celestial, spiritual ones. Adding fire to these activities, the Atlanteans had imported their sex queen and set her up in one of the major centers where she now conducted orgies and the first of the renown fleshpots of Egypt.

All of these events caused the population to cry for the return of the high priest. Even pharaoh began to believe that he had acted too harshly and was fast becoming convinced that the country needed the high priest to return. The king sent messengers to the little band of exiles in the Nubian mountains asking Ra-Ta and his followers to return—all was forgiven.