The soul of man was given two hands: the left one was to stretch upwards towards the Spirit, and the right – kept down – was to bless the earth, convey to it the strength and power of the heavenly worlds, so that what was below would be as sublime and full of splendor as what was at the top. It was to become a mirror reflecting the Maat – cosmic Law of justice and balance imitated in the material world.
Being a link between the spiritual world and matter – that is what was and what is the destiny of the soul. The fulfillment of this destiny, however, is a question of the future. The soul of modern man is woven from ethers belonging to the world of Nature, not noble enough to become the “bride” of the Spirit.
Maat
The Egyptian goddess Maat, who can be identified with the divine Word, Logos, Plan, was depicted as a kneeling woman with winged hands, one pointing at the sky and the other at the ground. The head of the goddess was decorated with an ostrich feather, called “shut”, derived from the word Shu, which was also the name of the god of air, earth and sky and meant “luminous space”. After the death of a given person, the goddess Maat put this feather on one scale and the human heart on the other. If the heart, according to the Egyptians, the seat of soul and consciousness, was heavier than a feather (i.e., impure), a person was devoured by Ammut, a monster that was a cross between a hippo, a crocodile, and a lion. If the scales were in balance during weighing, it meant purity and sinlessness of the heart, and the human soul could connect with Osiris, the Spirit, and live forever in Paradise. Anubis (the god of the underworld) and Thoth (the great teacher of mankind) whose Greek name is Hermes, took part in the weighing process.
Egyptian myths may appear to us as fairy tales, created by uneducated people to explain the mysteries of life and death. The initiate, however, will recognize in them the mystery knowledge conveyed in a veiled way, which is the foundation of the inner, mystical Christianity, the aim of which is to completely transform the human soul so that it can connect with the Spirit.
Life after death?
Speaking in the language of Egyptian myth, we can say that the “heart” of every average modern person is after death devoured by the monster Ammut. Translating this into esoteric language, we say that the consciousness of such a person is dissipating; his or her personality is gradually decomposed, and the “unholy”, contaminated ethers made of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon, join the ethers belonging to the world of Nature and of the elements: water (represented in myth by a crocodile), fire (symbolized by a lion) and earth (by the hippo). Here we can note the lack of the fourth element that constructs the human personality, namely air, represented by nitrogen. This is by no means a coincidence. This means that the human heart was lacking in spirituality; it was completely filled with passions and desires (fire), emotions (water) and greed, and a materialistic attitude (earth) and thus it was heavy and belonged to the physical world. Only the heart, carrying within itself the Shu’s luminous breath, was light as a feather and worthy of connecting with Osiris.
The ostrich feather symbolized the soulful human consciousness. The ostrich, as a flightless bird, represents the human soul that belongs to the earth. However, it is a bird with feathers, which are an attribute of air, which means that the soul, through its orientation and work on itself, has purified and ennobled itself, and has fully developed the mental body (ostrich feathers), thanks to which it can connect with the Spirit.
This depth of the Egyptian myth is timeless. And if only we have ears to hear, eyes to see, and a heart to understand, we will understand that we are called to live in a reality higher than the earthly one. Being eaten by the monster Ammut is somewhat reminiscent of the biblical Jonah, who was swallowed by a whale. Here we can find a reference to the human microcosm attached to the earth, doomed to incarnate constantly in the material world – to imprisonment until one awakens and starts to yearn for the world of the Spirit.
Contemporary Adam
However, liberation from the Earth’s magnetic field will not be accomplished by natural evolution. Contemporary man will not by himself become the image of Maat, the bearer of the Word, The Son of God, Christophoros. At the present stage of his development, he resembles Adam from the fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. His (Adam’s) recumbent body belongs almost entirely to the Earth, and the finger that he stretches towards God is soft, sluggish and passive. The whole figure of this man expresses indolence, laziness, a love of comfort. The horizontal position shows attachment to matter and reluctance to deal with higher matters.
In the era of Aquarius, people massively wake up from hypnotic preoccupation with the affairs of the physical world. Figuratively speaking, they stretch their index finger and point it towards the Spirit; they do not realize, however, that they are still “lying”; that bodily (we also mean the subtle bodies) they still belong to the earth. For until a man understands his condition, gets to know the path of liberation, and does Great Work on himself, his heart will be Ammut’s; he will be subject to the law of karma and his microcosm will spin in a vicious cycle of incessant incarnations.
How to break free?
The first condition for liberation is to be aware of the fact that we are in a prison, which many people nowadays call the Matrix. However, it is not a “divine matrix”, but a world made of its luminous, mental substance, operating at the low frequencies of fear, separation, lack of light (i.e. knowledge) and lack of love. Souls trapped in this world cannot overcome this vibrational barrier. Despite the hard work on themselves, they cannot eradicate their self-centered nature; they cannot exceed their tendency to dual perception of reality; they cannot love unconditionally and live without fear. Even though on a mental level they know what they should be, they are unable to put these high ideals into practice. There is a blessed moment when a person reaches the point, where he or she realizes that they have already tried all the methods of self-development known to them, they have undergone all possible therapies, have completed a huge number of workshops, have accumulated enormous knowledge, but still there is evil, fear and suffering within them. At this point, he or she begins to vaguely realize that they need help to break free. This psychological state is well reflected in the words of biblical Psalm 121: “I lift up my eyes to the mountains. Where will my help come from?”
(To be continued in part 2)
