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The Eclectic Metaphysicist |
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Why Did the Egyptian Civilization Stop Where it Did? |
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by Jim Hansen |
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Synopsis:
The Egyptian civilization lasted about 4000 years, yet never advanced beyond the copper, bronze and early iron ages. The civilizations of the Greek, Roman and Middle Ages ended largely as they began with desperately hard lives of disease, pestilence and oppression with little technological advance. Yet in the less than 400 years since the renaissance, modern civilization blossomed, circling the earth with copper wire, fiber optic cable, airplanes, ships and communication satellites. Why could we do it and not our ancestors? The answer seems to be in our rational thinking which changed the way reality is perceived.
Subject Material:
Last month we looked into the origins of energy healing and discovered that Ancient Egypt had a mature, extensive and thriving energy healing practice in the temple system. Indeed, it was the very basis for their Pagan religion, a set of religious myth and practice that spread throughout the Mediterranean and Near East worlds, heavily influencing even the Hindu and to a lesser degree, the Buddhist religions. It would not be a stretch to assert that Egypt "invented" religion as we know it today.
But the question we're looking into now is why the Egyptian civilization, which lasted about 4000 years, didn't go much beyond the bronze age in terms of technological development. For that matter, why didn't the Roman or Western civilization prior to the Renaissance do it? The Romans had a thousand years to develop something more profound than the war chariot, and the Holy Roman Empire of the Dark Ages, another roughly thousand year period, yielded only stasis. Yet our present Western civilization, which started as the Renaissance ended around 1600 AD, started with ox-drawn carts and flew the moon in a little more than 300 years. Neither anthropology, archeology or any other branch of science tells us why this disparity in technological development exists.
I continue with more from my forthcoming book, Healing the Metaphysical You: Advanced Energy Healing Techniques.
The Egyptians claimed that theirs was the third great civilization to come out of Africa. Egyptologists, as a group, have not confirmed this and content themselves to looking at the Egyptian civilization through the remaining monuments and physical ruins, the pyramids, temples, burial chambers and other artifacts typical of a dead civilization.
The story of Egypt from the archaeological record is one of literal interpretation, one born of physical and concrete evidence. It is that of a civilization which started sometime around 3500-4000 BCE and ended, for all practical purposes, around 700 AD. Without the records and the other fragile physical evidence burned and destroyed during the Christian revolution between roughly 400 and 700 AD, there is nothing else on which to base an understanding of their lives and practices.
Or is there? The answer is, yes, of course there is. But it requires a massive change in the way we think and thereby perceive reality. Our thinking is by now almost entirely driven by the rational process which shows us a world that is fundamentally different from that seen by the Egyptians.
Although spiritually instigated, the physical manifestation of this change involved the development of writing. Whether this led to rational thought or if rational thought led to writing, it makes no difference as the two processes go hand in hand. New findings continue to move the date that earliest writing appeared further into antiquity and shift credit from one culture to another. The first traces of writing found so far are from Egypt and Mesopotamia and dated to about 3500 BCE. In any event, the changeover from symbolic to rational thought and writing was underway throughout the entire period of the Egyptian civilization.
It is the wide-scale deployment of written language that enabled our rational thought processes to become fully developed. Without a written language, written human expression was limited to symbolic concepts as evidenced by Egyptian hieroglyphic writing. While language could not be written in the earliest of times, symbols representing concept could. And so hieroglyphic writing went beyond just representing a concept. Although they usually symbolize a principle as a form of esoteric knowledge, they can also be interpreted literally in the myth and legend of common exoteric interpretation. The hieroglyph is a powerful communication tool.
Prior to rational thinking, concepts had to be symbolically encoded and remembered without differentiation or labeling. Thus the symbols used to record events or observations, such as the Egyptian astronomy, described what the Egyptian mind saw in terms of integrated concept and principle.
Of all the written languages in the world, only two are suited for this mentality. These are, of course, the Egyptian hieroglyphic and, to a large extent, the Chinese ideogram systems of written expression. These symbols encapsulate the principle being expressed, without rational analysis of the thought behind the symbol. In other words, the principle is indelibly embedded into the symbol as an identity. Thus the connection between the physical symbol its non-physical essence or principle.
The thinking behind such a written language is, for us moderns, difficult to comprehend because it is based on the language of the heart, that of unity of principle. Without a proper philosophical disposition, hieroglyphic writing can be read only mechanically and thus literally. The hieroglyphic writing left to us by the Egyptians is the quintessential example of pre-rational symbolic thought. It is about essence, not definition.
The metaphysical meaning of the term principle is important if we are to understand pre-rational thought. If we consider that life is but a reaction to the surrounding reality, then the term "principle," as a metaphysical concept, could be described in part as the algorithm or a method of reaction of that particular principle of life energy. In other words, life forms in the physical are but a symbols representing the principle of the metaphysical energies that have manifest them. The Egyptian priests apparently saw life in these terms. As the energy healers of today we might describe a particular principle as the flow and interaction of energy systems represented in the physical by a person, animal, mineral form or some plant life.
The literal translations handed down by Egyptologists over the years has thus yielded nothing but the exoteric understanding of their meaning, that of the legends of various gods and their exploits which, suitably renamed, formed the basis of most of the world's great religions. Such exoteric information was provided to the Egyptian non-initiate classes as a way to give them what they needed at the time.
The inner or esoteric knowledge held by the Priesthood was handed down as a tradition and had to be learned individually and first hand by the initiates. As such, the knowledge held in any particular hieroglyph held any number of meanings or interpretations, each dependent on the response of the individual.
Obviously literal translations, however brilliant or enlightened, completely miss the hidden meanings actually encoded in these texts.
And so the reality seen through the eyes of the early Egyptian priests was completely different than what we perceive today. Their reality was one initially bounded, as is ours, by the five physical senses provided by the body. It was their thinking modality that made the expression of reality so different.
Unlike rational thought, symbolic thinking, which predominated ancient Egyptian mentality and many indigenous cultures of today, requires simultaneous integration of all senses. These are drawn together to form a unified view of reality that smoothly flows, not from moment to moment as with rational thought, but moment through moment. There are no gaps or missing elements in the reality of the symbolic mind. As a result, the Egyptian initiates had easier access to the knowledge of the heart, the instinctive or innate sensitivity to the metaphysical realm of energy, than do we.
But this all changed as the written language became more widespread. Written language demands distinction of concept because it, and the rational thought that goes with it, situates every expression in time and place. It is a sequential form of expression that demands a step-by-step analysis of contrasting values of each term, rather than the simultaneous integrated view of the symbolic mind.
In short, rational thought takes away the smooth flow of reality and breaks it down into steps, some little, some large. Rational thought, the process that brought us the inferred concepts of time and space, thus pulls us out of the moment. Or else symbolic thought pulls us out of time and space. Whatever, it is only a matter of viewpoint.
Both thought processes are largely still available to us, but by now they are predominantly exclusive. The point of all meditational practice is to avoid rational thought and thereby become more sensitive to the knowledge of the heart, our intuitive heritage. It is a milestone achieved for all who meditate when they recognize, without thought, that there is no thought. In those brief periods of time when this happens, a reality based on response to self is exposed. This is what being in the moment is all about.
The rational mind attacks reality with a relentless penchant for contrast and over simplification. It does this through a systematic dissection of everything reported by the five senses, working on the basis of simple binary comparison. Every rational thought begins with a distinction of what it sees, and if there is no record or memory of an opposite, it generates an assumption of that opposite. Thus the duality of the rational mind.
So, if you see a white ball, your mind instantly assumes that a black ball also exists, even if it has never seen or heard of one. This implication is enormous, for it allows the mind to generate all sorts of non-existent "facts." This is the beginning basis of our logic, a logic that deals in concept only, for if facts or concepts are not in evidence, they'll be generated on the spot as needed.
Continue
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Jim Hansen
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Bachelor of General Studies Summa Cum Laude
Healer, Author, and Reiki Master
Jim is a retired embedded systems electronics engineer and Reiki Master with extensive metaphysical interests and background in energy healing, remote viewing, and channeling. Born with latent psychic abilities, his metaphysical interests started before high school with experiments in hypnosis, astral travel, palmistry, meditation and eventually yoga that he started practicing while tracking satellites for nearly two years just 600 miles from the north pole.
His engineering background and technical training give him a strong analytical foundation for his metaphysical exploration and adventures. Always the practical engineer, his interests are in application of metaphysical principles for the betterment of those living in the physical. He has a unique way of equating the metaphysic with present day science and its ever-expanding discoveries.
This column explores a wide range of topics related to healing, but fundamentally, it is devoted to answering the toughest metaphysical question of all: How can I use what I've discovered in the metaphysic to better my present day life experience? Jim maintains that the purpose of living in the physical is NOT to become non-physical. That, he says, will come soon enough for all of us. But given that parts of the metaphysical are open to exploration, then, he says, it is entirely valid for us to use whatever we find there as a tool for living our lives to the fullest.
TheEclectic
Metaphysicist
@hotmail.com.
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